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OUTLINES 



OF THE 



LIFE AND CHAllACTER 



OF 



i^r "i 




ALBANY: 

JOEL MUNSELL, PRINTER. 

1848. 



1^340 






LIFE OF GEN. CASS. 



* ^» ^ » 



CHAPTER I. 

Motives for «n7nj^ ^1*5 Iiio<rraphy — Gen. Cass considered as a Student — a 
Legal Practitioner — a Ijegislator — as Governor — as a Diplomatist, andaa 
Senator — Sen'ices of Gen. Cassis father in the war of the Revolution — 
Birthplace of Lewis Cass — Crosses the Jlllegaiiies at the age of 17 — Stu- 
dies laiv and becomes a prominent member of the Western Bar. 

The important periods at which the name of Gen. Cass appears 
in the history of his country, the many public trusts he has filled, 
and the decision and energy which have stamped his character 
from early youth, have created a desire to see the leading events 
of his life, public and private, placed in a form in which they may 
be the more satisfactorily judged of. Biography performs one of 
its highest offices when it portrays the controlling influences vvliich 
gifted individuals have exerted on the prosperity of their country, 
and this office is ever the most grateful and acceptable to the 
friends of mankind, when it traces character through a series of 
early, consistent, self-dependent, developments. There is a charm 
in contemplating the efforts of a self-made man, rising from scenes 
of comparative obscurity, to those of high distinction and eminence 
continually sustaining himself at every new point, and finally 
concentrating the approbation of his countrymen — which even the 
most arbitrary governments have found it impossible to resist, but 
which come with double attractions to those of a free representa- 
tive character. 

These sketches are commenced under an impression that the 
life and character of the individual named, afl'ord a happy and 
practical illustration of the sentiment. They hold out, to young 
men of intellect and decision, a bright example to cheer tbem for- 
ward in the path of honorable exertion; while they display the 
genius of American institutions in the opportunities and facilities 
which they present to foster and reward talent, exertion and enter- 
prise. 

Such are the inferences which force themselves upon our atten- 
tion in contemplating the steps which mark the onward course of 
Gen. Cass. We are to consider him in early life, as a student 
without wealth or patronage, aspiring after success, with a strong 



bias to the military life. Then, as an ardent practitioner, entering 
successfully the career of the legal profession. Then, as a legis- 
lator, evincing an apt and ready talent, and vindicating the policy 
of his country at an epoch of moment. Then, as a soldier, grasp- 
ing his sword and rushing successfully to battle — driving the 
enemy from his first position in 1812 — unmasking a traitor in the 
act of his perfidy, and exposing to his countiy, in glowing terms, 
the true cause of her disasters. We are next to view him in the 
character of a civilian, taking the reins of a territorial government 
on a remote and exposed frontier — shielding its defenceless in- 
habitants — curbing its infuriated native tribes — exploring its 
geographical features and resources, and leading the territory on 
step by step, to a state of prosperity, and the assumption of the 
highest sovereign power; of an executive officer at the seat of 
government, administering the duties of a complicated department 
during a period of high excitement, and threatened civil war; of 
a diplomatist at a foreign court, risinof up in an hour of peril to 
break the shackles of court forms and preserve the rights of his 
country on the high seas, by a bold and energetic appeal which 
arrested the attention of Europe, and shook the policy of one of iis 
highest courts ; and, finally, by the patriotic defence of his coun- 
try in the Senate at home, and by the able and fearless advocacy 
of measures eminently suited to elevate her in tlie eyes of the 
world. 

More than a half a century is covered by the active period of 
these events. Mr. Cass dates his nativity in the last year of that 
momentous struggle for human liberty, which ended in the estab- 
lishment of American independence. That contest was the work 
of a prior generation; but it was a generation of noble hearts, who 
pledged their lives on the altar of human rights. The war drum 
which had animated them in battle, had not yet ceased to beat: 
and it was from the lips of his father, who had been an actor in the 
scenes, that he first learned the attractive story of its wrongs, perils 
and triumphs. His earliest memory was baptised, as it were, in 
the reminiscences of the Revolution. He who thinks right and 
patriotically in his youth, will be apt to continue to think so, in his 
age. This, we think, is the foundation of that strong love of 
country, which he has so prominently evinced, at every stage of 
his career. There is another marked trait of his character which, 
dating in the earliest period of youth, he has preserved through 
every vicissitude of climate to l)is age. He never tasted ardent 
spirits in any of its forms. 

His father. Major Jonathan Cass, was a practical mechanic, in 
a seaboard village of New England, on the breaking out of the 
American Revolution. He was one of the number of those hardy 
and self-poised thinkers on human rights, who fiew to the standard 
of their country, determined to risk all for the boon of freedom. 
He joined the army the very day succeeding the battle of Lexing- 
ton. He served ui;der Washington and his compeers, in the most 
momentous battles of the Revolution. He was at Bunker Hill, 



Monmouth, Trenton, Princeton, Germantown and Saratoga, serv- 
ing witli reputaiion ihroiiiilioiit the war. At its close, lie received 
a JMujur's cuininission in llie new t'orces, raised for the defence of 
the west, and he finally settled on a tract of land, awarded fur his 
military services, near Zanesville, on the I\Iuskinguni, Ohio, where 
he died within a few years, at a good old age, respected hy all for 
his judgment, strength of mind, and unvarying consistency of 
character. 

Lewis, his eldest son, was born at Exeter, in New Hampshire, 
October 9, 1782. He received a classical education at the cele- 
brated academy in that town. He was distinguished for his ardor 
and success in study, and love of reading — and left the academy 
with a high reputation for classical attainments. It was here also, 
that he first evinced his fondness for the military life. The stu- 
dents having been organized into^ volunteer corps, he was select- 
ed from his e.xpertness of discipline, and suavity of manners, to be 
their commander. At an early age he removed to the state of 
Delaware, and took charge of the academy of Wilmington. His 
views, were, however, early turned to the Great West. Its vast 
and rapid streams, its illimitable forests, the reported fertility of 
its soil, and variety of productions, pointed it out as the theatre of 
an immense future population, and tended to awaken and expedite 
his original intention uf going thither. In the year 1799, he flung 
his knapsack over his shoulders, crossed the Alleganies, and settled 
at Marietta, at the mouth of the Muskingum, where the first New 
England pioneers had fixed their earliest location, ehven years 
before. This was the germ settlement of Ohio. He engaged in 
the study of the law, at that place, under the late Geo. Meigs. 
Fort Harmer had been built in 1785. In 1787, Congress first ex- 
tended its jurisdiction over the territory northwest of the Ohio. 
The territorial government was, consequently, at the time of his 
arrival, in its twelfth year. Three years study qualified him for 
the practice of his profession, — a practice which, at that time, im- 
posed onerous journeys between distant points, where the court sat, 
and required no little enterprise and hardihood. There was often 
nothing but a trail to direct the way — the streams were without 
bridges, and the courts obliged to hold their sittings ivherever a 
decent shelter was to be found. On one of these legal excursions, 
while he, with the travelling bar, was crossing the swollen waters 
of the Sciota, the girth of his saddle turned, the waters swept the 
animal down stream, and he escaped with his life by swimming. 

There was still large portions of the now best settled districts of 
theterritory untenanted. Tiieentirearea from thehead of iheGreat 
Miami to the rapids of the Maumee, on the shores of Lake Erie, 
was a howling wilderness. A few bold men, with the spirit of 
Boon and Austi.v, had led the wav into various quarters. But 
darigers stared them in the face at everv turn. Indian hostility, 
though formally terminated hy the treaty of Greenville, in 1794, 
still kept the settlements in perpetual alarm, and it was long ne- 
cessary for the farmer to keep his loaded gun beside his plow. 



6 



CHAPTER II. 

Cass elected member of the House of Representatives of Ohio — Takes an active 
part in criishinir the Burr conspiracy — Draws up an e'.oqutnt address to 
Jefferson on the occasion — Is apjiointed in return Inj President Jefferson, U. 
S. .Marshal of Ohio — The Indians attack the .Imei-tcan camp on the H'abash 
in IHl 1 — Cass resigns his office as .Marshal, and proceeds to the scat of war 
as a volunteer — Elected Colonel of the '-id Ohio Regiment, and joins Hull 
in .Michigan — Urge^ the invasioji of Canada — Is the first man to land in 
the Province — Issues a glowing address to the arnv/ — Attacks the enemy, 
whom he routes, after a sharp confict, on the fields of Tarontee. 

■ Ohio was admitted into the Union in 1S03,* the territory com- 
posing it, having been previously separated from Indiana by an act 
of the 7th of May, ISOO. But. fifteen years from the first extension 
of the laws therein, had been sufficient to give her the requisite 
population for a State — such had been the extraordinary impulse 
of emigration which her favored soil and climate had inspired. 
This event, and the free election of a house of representatives, 
opened a new field for the talents and services of professional men. 
Cass was returned to that body, at an early period, nnd before the 
constitutional limit of membership. t Ardent, quick, bold, he be- 
came at once conspicuous for hie powers and facility of expression 
and comprehension of thought, as a speaker and writer. His just 
perception, and readiness of resource, in every emergency, at the 
spur of occasion, led to his frequent appointment on committees; 
and an inspection of the journals of the period will show, that his 
voice and pen were equally ready in promoting prominent leading 
measures. This was his starting point in public life. We cannot 
always tell that the stream which has overflown its banks, will 
form a river, but can be certain that if it had not, there would have 
been none. It is so with men, which makes it interesting to note 
their early acts, which betoken talent or decision of character. 

One of the first acts which brought him into prominent notice, 
was the conspiracy of Col. Burr. This distinguished individual — 
distinguished not less by his talents than his boundless and un- 
chastened ambition, had closed his term of ofiice as Vice-President 
of the United States, on the 4th of March, 1805. Disappointed in 
a renomination, yet writhing in mind, under the decision of Con- 
gress, which had foiled him in an attempt to step into the presi- 
dential chair, contrary to the wishes of the Democratic party, in 
1801, and further disappointed in securing his election by a mixed 

* An act of Congress authorizing the people of the eastern division of the 
territory rioilhw<-st of the Ohio, to form n cf>nslilution, nn I admitting; her to 
come into ihe Union under lliis cimslitiiiion, was pHssed April 3()ih, 1S()2. On 
the 2!)th »)!" November followinir, the people formed tlieir fdnslilution. and the 
representative (there was but one,) and sf^nators took their seats in Congress 
the next season. 

t 25 years of age. 



vote,* to the governorship of New York, gave vent to his desires 
of distinction, by plotting the invasion and overthrow of a neigh- 
boring province. The year 1S06 found him in the valley of the 
Ohio, raising men and means, and setting on foot an expedition 
for the conquest of Mexico. Cass, who was then in the Ohio le- 
gislature, drew up the act and report for arresting this mad scheme, 
which was warmly sanctioned and applauded. These were the 
earliest legislative measures adopted west of the Aileghanies, to 
arrest a scheme which agitated the whole Union, and Mr. Jeffer- 
son mentions them in his special message to Congress, of January 
22d, 1S07, as having given the " first blow " to this dangerous 
and high handed act of conspiracy under the republic. Younger 
minds may not find it obtrusive, even in so brief a biographical 
sketch, to be reminded of this. It was essential that the first dar- 
ing attempt to set the laws at defiance, should be crushed at once. 
It was due to the spirit of freedom and devotion which had marked 
the whole revolutionary contest, then fresh in the mind, that a 
Cataline should not be allowed to carry out, if he had matured his 
plans. The character of the government, its stability and credit 
in the eyes of Europe, demanded it. It was imperative, not only 
that it should maintain its sovereignty untarnished, but that the 
name of Burr — the first disappointed individual of high promise 
and high talent, but equally eminent laxity of principle, should be 
marked, as a monument, in our political history, to warn the foot- 
steps of other generations. This grave impetus to the alarm, ex- 
cited from Maine to Georgia, and roused every patriot to his duty. 
It was a fitting event to draw forth the vigor of a youthful patriot, 
just entering on public life, in the area where this conspiracy first 
developed itself, and an apt augury of that high eminence and 
success which were in store for him, before the snowy locks of age 
should whiten his temples. 

Cass gave vent to this impulse in the cause of the Republic, in 
the eloquent and patriotic address of the Legislature to Mr. Jef- 
ferson, which he penned on this occasion.! Its sentiments of at- 
tachment to the Union — its bold denunciation of its enemies, 
wherever existing — the value it set on the constitution, the inesti- 
mable blessings enjoyed under it, the eminence to which it has ex- 
alted us — its capacities to preserve its intergrity by an appeal to 
the patriotism of the people, and the unsaken confidence reposed 
in the principles of the goverment, as administered by IMr. Jeff'er- 
son, are the same which have marked his public course, in peace 
and war, at ever}' step of his political career. 

It was at this point that we see the man in full panoply of men- 
tal energy, spring upon the stage ; and we have only to mark his 
course, xohenever and ivherever he went, to see the same principles 
of devotion to his country, and the same energy and elevation of 

• Burrite is one of the local terms, of no enviable fame, which, originating 
in this election, beloni? to the history of political parlies in New York. 

t Vide Nat Intel. Vol. VIII, No. 963— Dec. 29ih, 1806. 



8 

thought and talent, and promptitude in action, developed. JefTerson 
attracted by the bold character of the youthful defender of the con- 
stitution and laws in the West, conferred on him the important ap- 
pointment of I\larshal of Ohio. This appointment was griven on 
the 2nd of March, 1S07,* in his 24th year. It was fair to presume. 
that he, who had been so prompt and able at that age, in arresting 
the machinations of a traitor in disguise, would feel an equal im- 
pulse as years advanced, to guard the frontier against other sedi- 
tious plotters and schemers, and to strike, if need be, the open de- 
serter of her rights, holding in his hands the truncheon of chief 
authority, civil and military.! 

But four years elasped, after the arrest and trial of Burr, before 
a more formidable epoch of danger opened in the West, which 
threatened its very existence. The Indian tribes had never been 
hearty in their acquiescence in the treaty of Granville. They had 
been broken down by the unsleeping energv and caution in his 
march, and the stalwart blows in battle, of Gen. Wayne. They 
acquiesced, by that treaty, in what they could not avoid. They 
might, indeed, have forgotten in a few years, their defeats, and re- 
posed in peace, had not the emissaries of a foreign power embit- 
tered their recollection and stirred up their animosities by false 
hopes of regaining their position as a sovereign power — a policy 
as fallacious in theory, as it was wickedly cruel in its application to 
these ignorant and deluded tribes. The British spies and run- 
ners, in the West, had two instruments well suited to their object 
of provoking a fresh war, in the Shawnet; brothers, Tecuintha^ 
and Elksattawa, one of whom assumed to be the military, the 
other, and by far the most influential, the religious guide and 
leader of the Indians. Tales of monstrous absurdity, to any but an 
Indian mind, were disseminated over the West, by the latter, as the 
voice of prophecy, in order to increase his adherents on the banks 
of the Wabash. It would almost seem that these tales and predic- 
tions were believed in by the deluded natives in proportion as they 
diverged from the axioms of good policy, common sense, and 
sound philosophy. I will mention but one instance. The pro- 
phet seiit a message to the Indians of Michiliinackinac and Lake 
Superior, in the summer of lSll,thatit would snow fortv feet 
deep the ensuing winter and they would all perish if they did not 
repair to the Wabash. 

The hardy pioneers of the west, had indeed, put no faith in the 
sincerity of the Indians from the close of the Indian war of 1794, 
being much of the mind of Gen. Putnam, who, in a letter written 
from Sandusky in October, 1764, in which he details some Indian 
counterplots, adds: — " What will be the event, I don't know, and I 

• Vide Senate Journal, 1807. 

t This allusion to the treachery of Gen. Hull, in 1S12, will be found to be 
fully justified in the subsequent pages. 

X I preserve the true Imlian mode of pronunciation though popular usage 
has long determined otherwise. 



don't care, for I have no faith in an Indian treaty, patched up with 
presents." 

The storm burst into the fierce midni(,fht attack on the American 
camp, on the Wabash, on the memorable 11th of November, 1811. 
This outburst of Indian hostility, though premature, and unsanc- 
tioned by Tecumtha, was a true index of the Indian mind. They 
burned to avenge themselves for wrongs, which were to be found, 
in truth, in the effects of their own weak institutions, and discor- 
dant and misguided counsels; and they flew to arms to secure 
rights utterly beyond their grasp, and which it was hopeless, to the 
last degree, that (if even granted to have existed in 149-J,) they 
could even have wrested back, after " a waiver" of 300 years. 
They must have overturned and uprooted American sovereignty, 
to have planted the Indian. Yet this, the local officers and emis- 
saries of the British Indian department at Maiden, stimulated them 
to do — a thing too hard indeed for the entire British power by land 
and sea to accomplish in '76, and which they also si<znally failed 
in, in 1812. And this advice was backed by the issue of presents 
and arms, and by the promised reward for human scalps! ! 

The patriotic states of Ohio and Kentucky were the first to fly 
to the rescue of the frontiers. Cass was one of the earliest men 
to repair to the scene of conflict, Eegardless of his rank as a 
field officer of the militia, and his position as Marshal of the State, 
he resigned the latter, grasped his arms, as his father had done 
in '75, and hastened to the place of rendezvous at Dayton, Ohio, 
as a simple volunteer. There, he was selected Colonel of the 3rd 
Ohio regiment of mounted men, and with the two other regiments 
of Findley and McArthur, and the 4ih U. S. Infantry, placed 
under the" command of Gen. Hull, then Governor of the Michigan 
terriiory. 

The'heart thrills in looking back to that eventful and gloomy 
period in American History, when the country was forced, by a 
series of insults and injuries, into the second war of independence. 
The news of its declaration on the 18th of June, overtook the 
troops in the wilderness, who, after a toilsome march through 
swamps and defiles, as toilsome as the Alps, reached their desti- 
nation at Detroit. The eyes of all America were riveted on that 
movement. Expectation was at its height, and every patriot heart 
glowed under the anticipated triumphs of that bold army, who 
were separated by hundreds of miles of wilderness from the point 
of support on the frontiers. 

Cass had, from the moment of the troops coming in sight of 
Detroit, urged the immediate invasion of Canada, and the prompt 
assault of that "nest of all evil," the British and Indian post of Mai- 
den, before reinforcements could arrive from below. The invasion 
was made on the 12lh of July. He was the first man in arms who 
leapt ashore from the boats. He immediately formed his men and 
led them up the acclivity to the plain ; where the pursuit of the 
enemy was committed to him, and it was from his pen, that the 
eloquent proclamation of the invasion emanated. 



10 

"After thirty years of peace and prosperity," he exclaims, 
*' The United States have been driven to arms. The injuries and 
aggressions, the insult and indignities of Great Brittan, have, once 
more, left them no alternative but manly resistance or unconditional 
submission." This is the language of the spirit of '76, wiiich is 
everywhere breathed through the glowing words and just and indig- 
nant sentiments of this paper. And nobly were they carried out, 
so far as it rested upon him, and his brave compeers. He was im- 
mediately placed in command of a strong detachment of picked 
infantry and riflemen, to find the enemy. For two days they 
eluded him. He had reached the vicinity of Maiden, on the third 
day after the invasion, when his spies reported the enemv as oc- 
cupying the strong pass of the bridge over the Tarontee,* a stream 
called Riviere aux Canards by the French. This is a deep stream, 
flowing into the Detroit river 14 miles below the city, and some 3 
or 4 miles above Maiden. To avoid suspicion of his design, and 
conceal the true character of the movement, he directed a body 
of men to shield themselves by the tall grass and copsewood on 
the west bank of the stream, till he, by marching five miles up the 
river to a ford, should descend on the enemy's bank and begin the 
attack. The plan succeeded. His order of battle was this. He 
formed his riflemen on the wings, with two companies of infantry 
in the centre, under Lt. Col. Miller, The troops moved with 
great alacrity, and in high spirits. His approach was not observed 
by the enemy till he came, unexpectedly, to a deep inlet into the 
Tarontee, which compelled him to diverge from his line of march. 
The movement gave the enemy time to form and make his ar- 
rangements, and they opened a distant but not effective fire. 
Flinging his banner to the breeze, and moving on in double quick 
time, yet maintaining admirable order, the American columns 
delivered their first volley within point blank distance. The effect 
was instant — the British column reeled and fled, but rallied and 
took another position. Not the least faltering appeared in the 
American ranks, they moved on shoulder to shoulder, Cass boldly 
leading the centre. Three times the enemy formed, and were as 
often driven from their position. It was dusk when they finally 
fled, taking the Maiden road. They were pursued till darkness 
supervened. Colonel Cass returned and camped on a field of 
battle, where it was determined bv a council of war to push for- 
ward to the town and storm the fort, as early as the commanding 
general could be heard from. It was found, from the wounded 
and prisoners taken, that he had engaged the 41st British regi- 
iment, and a body of auxiliary militia and Indians from Arnherst- 
burg. 

This was the first battle and victory of the war of 1S12, and 
the news of it, was hailed throughout ihecountrv, with the highest 
enthusiasm, as well of the name of Col. Cass, the Hkro of Ta- 
rontee ; and it cheered on the successful leader and actor, as he 

• Wyandot. 



11 

had, on the inarch, showed himself to be the eloquent asserfer, of 
his country's rights. It was at this moment too, that the Indian 
tribes began to regard with respect, this great Kosinan. 



» m » » » 



CHAPTER III. 

HuTs Treachery — Cass recalled — Hull evacuates Canada. — Surrenders De- 
troit — Cass denounces Midland indifrnantly breaks his own sword — Makes 
a report to jyashin^ton , of the true causes of the failure of the rampaifrn — 
Cass appointed a Colonel in the U. S. Jinny — J^'ext a Brigadier General 
— Proceeds to raise an army in the north-west — Invades Canada a second 
time — <^cls a prominerit part in the Battle of the Thames, and aids in cap- 
turinsr the papers ami hasccrnfre of the British General — Is appointed by 
Madison Governor of the Territory of Michigan — Details of his services in 
that important ojice — His daring exploits among the Indians. 

The sharp action of Tarontee, which placed the skill and intre- 
pidity of Gen. Cass in so hicfh a point of view, was the zenith of the 
inilitarv operations of the Northwestern army, in the campaign of 
1812. Up to this point the war had been one of unqualified suc- 
cess. But a single month had elapsed from its declaration. By the 
timely movement of the regular troops and volunteers from Day- 
ton, Canada had been invaded, within a few days of the arrival of 
the intelligence of the declaration of war on the frontier — a large 
number of the Canadians had joined our standard — the only body 
of regular troops in garrison at Maiden, with the militia and In- 
dians, had been defeated, with los<, in a well-contested battle, 
and the town and garrison itself would have fallen an easy prey 
to the advancing troops, before they could possibly have been suc- 
cored from forts George and Erie, on the distant Niagara.* It 
required but a commander-in-chief of energy, decision and courage 
to have prosecuted it to a triumphant result. But, unfortunately, 
the truncheon of authority was in the hands of a feeble, timid, su- 
perannuated old man. It was at this moment that the fears and 
irresdlution of Gen. Hull began to unfold themselves in a series of 
dilatorv, vascillating and weak measures, which soon became dis- 
graceful and criminal, and ended by plunging the country into dis- 
tress and disgrace, and dissipated a high-toned and valiant army. 

• The late John Kenzie E«q., of Chicago, then a prisoner at Maiden, in- 
formed the writer, in 1^21. that there were no troops hui tho<c whom Col. 
Cass h id engaged, and that the town, if it had been attacked, would have 
fallen at once. 



12 

Cass was evidently the man of tiie eba ; but he was but a colo- 
nel of volunteers J his very success on the Taron creek alarmed 
the old general, whose mind had, for years, been brooding over 
the savage hordes of the north, and the undefined horrors of the 
Indian tomahawk and scalping knife. " Let every man take a 
brand of fire in his hand, and burn down the obnoxious town," had 
been the voice of the council of war called on the battle field by 
Col. Cass, respecting the odious depot of Maiden — a depot, where 
the scalps of American women and children and hoary headed 
men were received and paid for. But Gen. Hull, instead of re- 
sponding to the ardor of the troops under Col. Cass, near that hate- 
ful repository, ordered that officer and his company back to camp, 
under some flimsy pretext, and began to doubt the policy of his 
whole movement. For a military commander to doubt and waver, 
under such circumstances, is to decide his own fate. The whole 
force of the invasion policy was to strike, and strike hard, before 
the British could obtain reinforcements, and while the French in- 
habitants were prepared to receive them. But Gen. Hull fell under 
the terror of his own mind. Cass was recalled on the 17th or ISlh 
of July. From this moment, Hull forfeited his confidence, if not 
that of every efficient officer of his command. In a few days the 
Canadians, who under the proclamation had joined his standard 
freely, began to disperse. On the night of the 7th of August, when 
his army had been less than a month in Canada, a time sufficient 
for reinforcements to have marched from Fort George to Maiden, 
he noiselessly evacuated the countr}', and recrossed the river into 
Michigan, at midnight, with all his troops, and without an enemy 
in sight. Cowardice treads on the heels of imbecility. On the 
16th of the same month, after eight days of trembling and vascil- 
lation — after sending some of the best officers out of the fort on 
detachment duty, and Cass among the number, he basely surren- 
dered the fort, the town, and the entire territory, detachments and 
all, without firing a gun. The news of this deep disgrace, was 
the very next, in point of the order of its reception on the frontiers 
and seaboard, after the victory of Col. Cass on the banks of the 
Tarontee ; and so astounding and unexpected was it, to the whole 
country, that the intelligence, for a while, excited utter disbelief. 

Cass, who was out on detachment duty in the wild and tangled 
passes of the river Raisin and the Ecorce, and who approached the 
fort on his return, in such manner as to have taken the besiegers 
in the rear, was so indignant, that he could not restrain his feel- 
ings. " Traitor," he exclaimed to Gen. Hull's messenger bringing 
the news, and telling him his command was included in the sur- 
render, " he has verified our worst fears, he has eluded our grasp, 
and disgraced the country. But the enemy shall never receive the 
hilt of f/iy sword." So saying, he snapped liis sword in two, and 
cast it on the ground. 



13 




Col. Tass iiidigiiaiitly lircakiiig Ins Mvord at Hull's Surrender, 

Liberated on parole, he immediadely repaired to Washington, 
under orders from Col. McArlhiir, to report to the government the 
true causes of the disaster, and the failure of the campaign. His 
report of the 10th of September, is a document whicli deserves to 
be referred to by every friend to the government and advocate of 
justice, in all future time. While it vindicates the policy and 
means of the campaign, and throws the onus of its failure on Gen. 
Hull, where it belongs, it denotes that such had been the impres- 
sion of his imbecility among the leading officers, that three of the 
colonels of regiments, in which he must be understood to have in- 
cluded himself, had determined to arrest him and put him in con- 
finement, should he, in their presence, either propose or accept 
terms of surrender. This plan was defeated bv the absence of 
two of the colonels (Cass and McArthur) named, who had been 
ordered on detached duty. The other, the brave and lamented 
Col. IMiller, stood by his guns, with matches lighted, on the ram- 
parts of the fort, ready to sweep down the advancing columns of 



14 

over-marched regulars and dressed Canadian militia, led bv Gen. 
Brock. " Not a sign of discontent," says Col. Cass, " broke upon 
the ear; not a look of cowardice met the eve. Every man expect- 
ed a proud day for his country, and each was anxious that his in- 
dividual exertion should contribute to the result." His entire state- 
ment is a glowing history, and the best history of the facts.* 

A thousand and sixty Americans, with three hundred militia, 
without the walls of the fort, and other detachments at hand, with 
100,000 ball cartridges, 400 rounds of 24 pound shot, 40 barrels 
of powder, and 3,500 stand of arms, and pieces of cannon of all 
calibres, with fifteen days' provisions in the fort, and three months' 
supplies within reach, surrendered to 1 030 men, or twent3'-nine 
platoons, of twelve to a platoon, as counted, of men of all shades, 
while, red and black, who were dressed in uniform, without count- 
ing the mixed, unorganized masses.! Such was the surrender of 
Detroit — the most burning blot on the military fame of America 
known to history, Arnold's treason alone excepted. 

The government put Gen. Hull on his trial for treason and cow- 
ardice, of which charges, after a full investigation, with all the 
benefit of the highest counsel, he was convicted and sentenced to 
be shot. In the mean time, and while these investigations were 
going forward, the events of the war thickened. A new career 
of victory was opened on the high seas, where Porter, on the 17th, 
and Bainbridge, on the 30lh August, captured British ships in a 
manner that served to animate the spirit of the country. 

Col. Cass was immediately appointed to a colonelcy in the reg- 
ular army, but he was not exchanged and liberated from his pa- 
role, till the winter of 1813. He was meantime promoted to the 
rank of brigadier general, and proceeded west to raise and organ- 
ize new forces for the war. It is one of the facts connected with, 
this promotion, and the marked estimation and confidence in which 
he was held, that the President placed in his hands, through the 
Secre ary of war, commissions for the new regiment to which he 
was appointed, signed in blank, and entrusted to his sagacity and 
fidelity the duty of selecting suitable persons on whom to confer 
these commissions. His exertions were crowned with success; 
the whole West burned to wipe out the disgrace of Hull, and 
rushed to the field. He soon joined the army for the recovery of 
Michigan, which was ordered to assemble ai Seneca, Ohio, under 
the command of Gen. Harrison. Before this army reached the 
shores of Lake Erie, Com. Perry had, on the memorable 10th of 
September, defeated the British fleet, which enabled this gallant 
officer to transport the new army across the Lake, and saved 
them the toil of a long and dilficult march, through the Black 
Swamp and the marsliy ground of the Raisin, to Detroit. The 
whole army debarked from the fleet on the 27th of September, on 
the Canada shore, on the open beach extending below Amherst- 

• Vide Brannan's Utricial Letters, 1 vol., 800, Washington, 1823, p. 56. 
t Brannan's Official Letter. 



15 

burg. We have the testimony of living witnesses, that Gen. Cass 
was a prominent actor in ihc scene.* To Gov. Shelby and him- 
self had been entrusted the entire movements of the debarkation; 
Gen. C. was on his horse at early light, and formed and directed 
the cohmin of infantry and artillery, as they gained the beach, 
and prepared them for their march against Maiden and Amherst- 
buro- He was now, with a military force, about the same number 
of miles east of that depot, as he had been west of it, on the Ta- 
rontee, in 1812. But when the army under Gen. Harrison entered 
that town, the British commander. Gen. Proctor, had evacuated it, 
contrary to the strong expostulations of his allies, the Indians, and 
the place fell without a blow. The retreating enemy were finally 
overtaken and defeated on the banks of the Thames, on the 6th 
of October. In this noted battle, in which so many deeds of per- 
sonal bravery were performed, Gen. Cass was a prominent actor. 
He served as one of the confidential aids of Gen. Harrison in 
forming the troops for battle. His voice and energy gave anima- 
tion to the lines formed in the difficult positions which they occu- 
pied, hemmed in, as they were, by forests ami swamps — a position 
which the united sagacity of the enemy and their Indian allies, 
had pre-selected. And when this order had been accomplished, 
amid the whoop of Indians and roar of artillery, he charged with 
the body of mounted men, under Gov, Shelby and Col. James 
Johnson, which broke through the enemy's line and captured his 
artillery, while the battle still raged against the confederate In- 
dians, who, under Tecumtha, enfiladed the army from a marsh. 
Cass joined the hot pursuit of Proctor, after the lines were broken, 
for many miles, and aided in the capture of the baggage and pa- 
pers of the British general, to which we are indebted for important 
details respecting the war. Gen. Harrison, in his report of the 9th 
October, commended him as " an officer of the highest promise."! 
This decisive battle terminated the campaign of 1813, and re- 
stored the Michigan territory. It taught the confederate Indians 
the fallacy of reliance on a power whose strength was not in the 
will of the people, and which, to them, at least, has been far more 
profuse in its promises than performance. The idea of the sove- 
reignty, for which they had been stimulated to fight, was dissipated 
by a single battle. The territory which they were promised to re- 
gain, northwest of the Ohio, was lost irretrievably. Their boasted 
leader was killed. They trembled for their very existence north 
of the straits. They were, after the battle, destitute of subsist- 
ence, impoverished and deserted ; and their chiefs were prone to 
come into the American camp, party after party, and sue for ad- 
mission to the terms of the treaty made at Spring Wells, on the 
8th September previous. t 

By one of those extraordinary changes of position, which makes 
history sometimes stranger than fiction. Gen. Cass, who had de- 

• Vide Ex. Doc, 7th vol , for 1S36-7. Letter of William M. Davis, 5th 
March, 1836. f Vide Brannan. t Iniiian Treaties, p. 173. 



16 

nounced and exposed the imbecility of Gov. Hull in 1S12, was select- 
ed by ]\Ir. -Madison to occupy liis place in 1813. He was appointed 
Governor of the territory of Michigan the 9ih of October, 1813. This 
office, it is known, he had never solicited, and he had any thing 
but favorable views of its acceptance, when it was first tendered. 
But the citizens of Michigan pressed his acceptance of it, pleased 
with the bold and patriotic course which had marked his military 
career, not less than with his frankness and decision of character, 
and suavity of manners. He yielded to these entreaties, and sent 
the same fall, for his family, to Muskingum county in Ohio, where 
he had previously resided. 

Mrs. Cass is a Virginian, a daughter of the late Gen. Philip 
Spencer, of the revolutionary army, and a lad}' of piety, high 
moral worth and decision of character, who found full exercise 
for her exertions, in rearing a young fatnih', on so exposed a fron- 
tier, and thronged as her dwelling daily was, with parties of 
chiefs and warriors, whose wants taxed her benevolence, and were 
not easily satisfied. 

We are to view Gen. Cass, at this point, as commencing a new 
and enlarged career of usefulness, and one which called for high 
civic as well as military talents. For two years, he had wielded 
the sword in the van of our western armies. He had roused up 
the circles in which he moved, with stirring addresses by his voice 
and pen, and had led his troops forward with the spirit and deter- 
mination of being first in the field, being ever of opinion, as he 
said on a subsequent memorable occasion, tha'. " it is better to 
fight for the first than the last inch of territory."* He now as- 
sumed the duties of an executive officer on a remote frontier, in 
juxtaposition with the enemy, where the war had, from the first, 
put on the most sanguinary character. There were not more than 
3,000 souls in the territory. They consisted, as a basis, of de- 
scendants of the ancient French population, some of which liad 
come into the country as early as the days of Champlain. They 
retained their language and customs unchanged. Tliey were fa- 
vorably inclined to the American cause, and could not, indeed, 
have maintained their existence, on so exposed a frontier, where 
all the Indians were hostile, had it not been for that kindness and 
peculiarity of manners, which have ever rendered the French 
people the most acceptable of all the European races, to the Indian 
race. This influence he availed himself of, successfully, in his 
continued eflt)rts to shield the settlements, old and new, from the 
fury of hostile and foreign bands, and marauding parties. The 
whole of the year 1S14 and a part of 1815, was a scene of alar;ns 
and contests, in which he was obliged to keep the field, with a 
volunteer force, the greater pressure of the war having drawn ofT 
most of the regular troops to the banks of the Niagara and St. 
Lawrence. Several of these expeditions he led in person during 
that year, and on one occasion, while riding at ease, barely escaped 

• Vide Speech on the Oregon Question. 



17 

the rifle of an Indian, skulking behind a tree, but who was made 
to pay dearly- for his treachery. Men were frequently scalped or 
plundered in sight of the town. 

The peace of Ghent, the intelligence of which did not reach the 
frontiers till midwinter, opened up a new scene of duties. The 
thin and scattered settlements had been hairas-cd and impoverished 
bv war, and provisions for the immigrants who began, slowlv, to 
seek this region, had to be transported from Ohio. Vessels were 
few and of small tonnage: a steamboat did not visit them till 
ISIS. There was no land office, and no land surveys in progress. 
The first treaty of cession was obtained from the Saginaw's, in 1S19. 
In that year also, the first delegate was arlmilted to a se.it in Con- 
gress, and, by the in'roduction of the second grade of territorial go- 
vernment, the executive, judicial, and legislative powers, were 
distributed, and General Cass felt himself, in a measure, relieved 
from the exercise, for several years, of such anomalous powers. It 
is a proof of the wisdom of his administration, that duriiiL;- this pe- 
riod of almost unlimited executive authority, no complaints were 
made of any partial or unjust decisions, such was his scrupulous 
regard to private rights, and an equal diotribution of the privi- 
leges, as well as the duties and responsibilities of the citizens. A 
good horseman and woodsman, he traversed all parts of (he terri- 
tory and the adjacent territories, and made himself familiar with 
the wants of the people, and the character and resources of the 
countrv. Wherever he went, he was hailed as a benefactor; and 
it has fallen to the lot of few men, vested with high authority, to 
have enjoyed so warm and wide-spread a measure of popularity 
as has marked the whole civil and military administration of Gen. 
Cass in Michigan. 

In 1S:20, he extended his comprehensive views and policv to the 
area of the upper lakes and the source of the Mississippi, with a 
double reference to the character of the Indian population placed 
under his charg(>, and to the resources and geogr.iphical features 
of that immense and unknown region. In this extensive journey, 
he concluded treaties with several tribes, prepared for establishing 
a fort at Sault Ste. Marie, and caused a deputation of Chippewas, 
from a point five hundred miles above the falls of St. Anthonr, to 
make a peace with their ancient enemies the Sioux. In this ex- 
pedition he was accompanied by scientific men, to observe the 
natural history and topography of the country. At St. xMary's 
Falls, near the outlet of Lake Superior, the Chippewa Indians op- 
posed his progress ; broke up the council in a violent manner, and 
retiring to their encampment on an elevation, ran up the British 
flag in defiance. The experience of Gen. Cass had induced him 
to bring along from the port of Michilimackinac, a tletacliinent of 
artillery armed with muskets, added to which, the seven members 
of his travelling family, including savans and guides, were armed 
with short rifles. But he would not suffer an armed man to ac- 



18 

company him. Taking- the interpreter* alone, he pursued the 
path tlirough a gorge and up the sandy acclivity to the Indian camp. 
Going directly to the lodge of the hostile chief who had offered 
this indignity, he pulled down the flag with his own hands, and 
tramplt d upon it. The Indians looked upon tlie movement with 
amazement. They had eighty loaded guns in their tents, but not 
a gun or implement of offence was raised — not a word was utter- 
ed. But not so with Gen. Cass. With his eyes flashing fire, and 
standing upon the degraded ensign, he told them that they were 
within the jurisdiction of the United States — that red and white 
men were alike bound to respect its laws, and that he, as exercising 
the power of the President, should never permit a foreign flag to 
wave on its soil. He then returned to his camp with the flag. It 
was from this moment that this people, struck with his air and 
voice, and the intrepidity of the act, began truly to regard him as 
the great man of the nation, and hailed him as the American 
Kosinon. It was not yet noon, and before evening closed they had 
sought another council, and agreed to the terms of the treaty of 
the IGth June. lS20.t 

In 1S27, the Winnebagoes manifested a hostile disposition, and 
threatened to rise on the settlement, while Gen. Cass was engaged 
in a general council of the tribes, including some of this tribe, at 
Buttes des Morts, on the Fox river of Winconsin. The plot was 
discovered. Stepping into his light canoe, with a crew of trusty 
voyageurs, he ascended the Fox river, and went down to the Wis- 
consin, through the heart of the Winnebago country, to the Missis- 
sippi, and thence down that stream to St. Louis, where troops were 
immediately put in motion for the scene of threatened hostility. 
He then ascended the Illinois to Lake Michigan, and returned to 
the camp at Buttes des Moris, to conclude the treaty. All this 
was done in an incredibly short period of time. The danger was 
avoided, and the treatyt accomplished. As he was descending the 
Wisconsin he espied a Winnebago lodge; directing the men to 
land, he took his interpreter and proceeded up the acclivity to its 
front. Durinfr this act, a Winnebasjo secretly took aim at him 
with his gun, as he passed under some trees, and deliberately 
snapped his piece ; but it providentially happened that the powder 
did not ignite. This occurrence is attested by an eye witness.ll 

• James Riley, a son of the late Mr. Riley, postmaster of Schenectady. 

t Vide Indian Treaties, p. 280. 

X This treaty related solely to the settlement of the boundnry lines between 
the Irilies, to keep them at peace, and contained no cession of l.ind or other 
advantage to the United Stales, nor was any such advantage asked of the 
Winnebagoes, or others. 

II Major F. 



19 



CHAPTER IV. 

Admimstratlon of Gov. Cass — His review of the campm'frn of 1812, and 
commc}ils on the dis<^raceful surrender of Detroit, and his vindication of 
American lionor in I'SWl — His eminent talents in civil life — His policij in 
the Government of J\lirhii;nn — Dcvclopcs the resources of that fine rountri/ — 
Establishes courts — Orders survci/s of the public lands, and laijs the foun- 
dations for tlic settlement of that Territorij — Explores Lake Superior and 
the head tvalers of the Mississippi — Concludes various Treaties with the 
Indians thereabout — nmon<r whom for the first time arc established the 
authority and laws of the United States, through his powerful instrument- 
ality. 

The administration of General Cass as Governor of Michigan, 
and Superintendent of Indian Allairs in the Northwest, embraces 
a period of eighteen years, extending- from 1813 to 1S31. It has 
been seen, that at the age of thirty, sinking every consideration of 
rank and place, and intent alone on the honor and safety of his 
country, and the protection of her frontiers — menaced as they then 
were, at the same moment, by an Indian anil a British foe, he 
threiv himself fearlessly into the contest. Mounting his horse on 
the banks of the Muskingum, and seizing his rifle, at the first 
sounds of alarm, he rushed to the field, with singleness of purpose, 
as a Marion and a Putnam had done in '76. His address to the 
patriotic corps, who on this occasion, elected him as their leader, 
is couched " in thoughts that breathe and words that burn." It 
cannot be quoted at length in these sketches, but its principles, 
like those of his exposure of the errors of the campaign,* a short 
time after, may be emphaticiilly alluded to, in considering 
him in the new position he was now to occupy as the Executive 
oflicer of a new territory, and the eloquence of both these 
papers, as preserved in the journals of the day, is commend- 
ed to the young, that their hearts, like his, may be early imbued 
with the love of country. They reveal three strong points : duty, 
honor, and faithfulness to the constitution — points of political rally 
which were thrown out hastily, in the storm of excitement which 
convulsed the period, but which nevertheless, well n)ark the fixed 
and patriotic character of the man, and have formed the unvarying 
princi})ies of his onward course. Placed in every subsequent situa- 
tion, at home and abroad, his watchwords have been, duty, honor, 

and FAITHFULNESS TO THE PRINCIPLES OF THE CONS. ITUTIO.V. These 

sentiments, it has been observed, animated him in his first brisk 
con diet with the enemy on the banks of the Tarontee, and again 
during the ever memorable and trying scenes, which, both imme- 
diately preceded and followed the disgraceful surrender of Hull 
at Detroit! No attemj)t of the friends of the late Gen. Hull in 
latter days, to wipe out the disgrace of that surrender, or disinter 
his reputation from the tomb, and to relieve it by casting shades 

•Official Letters, p. 60. 



20 

upon that of Oi fearless icittiess, Is at all likely to alter the judgment 
of his military peers, or to lessen the force of the historic odium 
which rests upon his name in consequence of that most humiliating 
transaction. 

It is important to bear this important era in mind, and to re- 
member the high and prominent part borne in it by Col. Cass, in 
branding it in its true colors, at the capital of his country, and thus 
preparing the minds of the people and the government lor making 
a new and vigorous effort for regaining the possession of the coun- 
try which Hull had lost. " When the forces landed in Canada," 
observes t.he indignant officer, in his report to the Secretary of 
War, on the lOlh of September, 1S1:2, " they landed with an 
ardent zeal, and stimulated with the hope of conquest. Had an 
immediate attack been made upon JMalden, it would doubtless 
have fallen an easy victory. The ammunition was placed in the 
wagons, the cannon were embarked on board the floating batte- 
ries, and every requisite article was prepared. The spirit and zeal, 
the ardor and animation displayed by the officers and men on 
learning the near accomplishment of their wishes, were a sure and 
sacred pledge that in the hour of trial, ihey would not be found 
wanting in duty to their country and themselves. But a change 
of measures, in opposition to the wishes and opinion of all the 
officers, was adopted by General Hull. The plan of attacking 
Maiden was abandoned, and instead of acting offensively, he bioke 
up our camp and recrossed the river in the night, without even 
the shadow of the enemy to injure us." 

Such were the views with which this young officer regarded the 
retrograde movement from Canada, and such were the burning 
feelings of disgrace with which eight days after that ill-starred 
mitiativc movement, he returned from the wild passes of the Huron, 
and the ambuscaded woods of Maguason, to behold the fiag of his 
country needlessly, hopelessly, and disgracefully surrendered to 
the enemy. Neither the relative force of that enemy, nor the 
necessities of the times demanded or in the least justified the 
measure. " But," he exclaims indignantly, " had we been totally 
destitute of provisions, our diitij and our interest was to fight. 
The enemy invited us to meet him in the field. By defeating 
him, the whole coantr\- would have been open to us, and the ob- 
ject of our expedition gloriously and successfully obtained. If we 
had been defeated, we hud nothing to do but to retreat to the fort, 
and make the best defence which circumstances and our situation 
rendered practicable. But basely to surrender without firing a 
gun — tamely to submit without raising a bayonet — disgr icefidhj 
to pass in review before an enemy, inferior in quality, as well as 
the number of his forces, were circumstances which excited feel- 
ing's of indifrnation more easily felt than described. To see the 
whole of our mi^n, flushed with the hope of victory, eagerly await- 
ing the approaching contest; to see them afterwards dispirited, 
hopeless and desponding, at least 500 shedding tears, because 
they were not allowed to meet their country's foe, and to fight 



21 

their country's battle?, excited sensations which no American has 
ever before had cause to feel, and which, I trusi in God, will never 
aofain he felt, while 07ie man remains to defend the standard of the 
Union."* 

Billy, Honor, and Faithfulness to the Constitution, alike spurn- 
ed the act. It was with these sentiments that he returned to that 
frontier in 1813, at the head of a biiijade, along with the banded 
chivalr}' of Kentucky and Ohio. He pursued ihe enemy to the 
banks of the Thames, where the opinion of superiority in the 
American troops, which he had expressed the year before on the 
nefarious surrender of Hull, were nobly vindicated and displayed 
in the entire route of the British army, and its deceived and be- 
wildered Indian allies. And it was with a like exaltation of the 
sentiments of duty and fidelity to his country, that he assumed the 
civil and military government of the territory of Michigan. 

We have now reached a new basis for his fame. It was here, 
indeed, as the active and indomitable representative of the Presi- 
dent, that he developed talents as a civilian, lawgiver, and a di- 
plomatist, a careful administrative oflicer, and a statesman, which 
have laid the firmest foundation for his reputation. For it must be 
confessed, in surveying the pages of history, that while military 
skill is essential to raise the drooping spirits of nations, and takes 
strong hold of the svmpaihies of men, mere military skill — mere 
physical courage, with the coolness to contrive and execute the 
plan of a battle or a campaign, without civic talents, and an entire 
devotion to, and understanding of, tbe laws and constitution of a 
country, is the most dangerous t alent which has ever been cherished 
by nations. Little do we apprehend the dazzle of such misnamed 
heroic, but really tyrannic traits in this Union; but it is the policy 
of a wise people, who love the maxims of peace, law and justice, 
to guard every avenue against the approach of unchastened foot- 
step.^ to the temple of freedom. There has been but one Wash- 
ington in the world, and but one Burr in America. But the genus 
of the latter is rife in history, and when we see large and re- 
spected masses of men selected for their wisdom and preeminent 
love for conservative tone of government, casting their carefully 
ch'rished principles away, and uniting in wild huzzas for m^re 
military renown, it behooves the people to reflect, and to seek for 
the old landmarks of liberty which have guided our fathers through 
the storm and the battle. It is the oaken leaf of democracy that 
crowned their heads. 

Cass was eminently the man for the position in whi:h the 
sagacitv of Mr. Madison had now placed him. The Governorship 
of JMichigan, in 1*^13, was no idle post, no sinecure. The iron 
footsteps of war had fallen heavily, and with a crushing weight, 
upon it. War still raeed within it, and around it, and the execu- 
tive had, durinor all that year, surrounded as he was by a savage 
foe, and ihroujih the whole of 1S14, and the winter of 1815, up 
to June, to wield both the sword and the pen. There was as 

•Branaan's Ollicial Letters^ p. ♦lO. 



22 

much decision, care and wisdom required to use the one, as the 
other. And when peace came, and tlie inhabitants began to ilee 
back from I'orts and stockades to their ancient fields and settle- 
ments, these had to the eye of the beholder, niore the aspect of 
some dilapidated, overnm and war-wasted district, along the Bel- 
gian borders of the Rhine or the Sciield, in the days of Philip II, 
than a bona fide American tcrritor}'. 

The first effort of Gov. Cass's policy was to reconstruct the di- 
lapidated government and lay the foundations of social order; to 
secure the peace of the frontier with the Indian tribes — to protect 
the existing settlements, and provide for enlarging them by trea- 
ties — and to connect the feeble and exposed districts by roads and 
bridges which a team could pass — converting mere trails into 
wagon roads; and to extend these from the ancient vally where 
alone the French population was located, to interior points of the 
peninsula. For it was a singular trait, and one which bespoke the 
little enterprise of the old inhabitants, or else their attachment to 
intervale lands, that they lived entirely on the mere skirts of the 
territory along the main rivers, and had not penetrated, for any 
purpose of agriculture, into the interior. It was not till about 
1818-19, that the present attractive oaklands — one of the widest 
tracts of the best wheat growing districts in America — was ex- 
plored ; and such was the low estimate in which the interior of Mi- 
chifran jrenerallv was held, that the lands were absolutely reported, 
by commissioners sent out to view them, as unfit to be given in 
bounty lands to the soldiers of the late war. These commissioners 
had, indeed, never penetrated through the wet and heavy forest 
extending but tivelve miles hack from Detroit I I well remember 
the feelings of exultation and triumph, which, in 1819, attended 
the return of the first exploring parties which had penetrated to 
the present site of the town of Pontiac and the banks of the Scia- 
■wassa — then a perfect terra incognita, though the former was within 
thirty miles of Detroit. 

Courts of law and of record were established, new counties 
erected, surveys of the public lands set on foot, and other facilities 
created in the' territory for inviting and sustaining an emigrant 
population. For several years after the war, there was indeed 
but a slow increase of population, the tide of emigration setting 
strong towards the attractive valleys of the Ohio, the Wabash, and 
other more southerly latitudes. There was still a prejudice in the 
public mind against Michigan and the upper lake region generally, 
as a farming country, which had its origin in the unfavorable re- 
port above mentioned, as sanctioned by official authority, whirh it 
required time and the acquisition and diffusiou of correct geographi- 
cal information to correct. Gov. Cass did not allow this fact to 
escape him, but determined to encourage and set on foot efforts, 
in various ways, to explore the country, and spread abroad the re- 
sults in the journals and other popular forms. Those who are 
curious in this matter, will find full evidence of this policy in an 
examination of the files of the early newspapers and journals of 



23 

the frontier — a means of intelligence, which is indeed, almost the 
onlv curly resource of a frontier population, and <,a'nerally supplies 
the gfreat want of books, in the wild and new settlements for many 
years. He was of the number of those men, however, wlio be- 
lieve that it is not enou(;h to recommend to others ili^nble modes 
for the encourac^ement of observation and progress of society ; but 
who are ever ready to give testimony of their sincerity in their 
plans, by becotning efilcient actors tliemselves. 

Fortunatelv for the progress of knowledge, his duties as Super- 
intendent of Indian Affairs, a depirtment of his administration 
in which he arose to eminence, and acquired great influence with 
the Indian tribes, called for research in the names, numbers, and 
location (jf these tribes, in the remote parts of his jurisdiction ; and 
he was thus placed in a position to make the exploration and in- 
vestigation of the topography, and resources, and the native popu- 
lation concurrently. 

In 1819 he originated the plan of an expedition through the 
series of upper lakes, by way of the head of Lake Superior, to the 
extreme upper Mis-issippi, with the view of tracing this river to its 
source. In this expedition, the plan of which received the sanction 
of the government, he was furnished with a competent engineer 
and topographer, with a military escort, a mineralogist and geolo- 
gist, and several other observers and assistants, by which means 
the original objects were secured, and the government placed in 
the possession of a valuable body of information for the guidance 
of its military and interior administration. The open season of 
1S20, was devoted to this expedition, which reached the high and 
remote point on the sources of the Mississippi, which has been 
since denominated by geographers, Cass Lake. The publication 
of the narrative of this lour, which had attracted public attention, 
brought the region into notice, caused the fertility and advantages 
of Michigan and northren Illinois and Wisconsin, to be properly 
appreciated, and drew the attention of many persons, for the first 
time to the bold and energetic individual to whose life and charac- 
ter these sketches are devoted. During this expedition, treaties 
were formed with the Ottawas at Arbre Croche, with the Chippe- 
was at Saidt Ste. Marie and with the Sioux and Chippewas at 
the Falls of St. Anthony. About five thousand miles of lake and 
river coast were traversed and sketched by this expedition. Gov. 
Cass had conferred with a very large number of Indian bands, 
who had only known the government of the United States by 
rumors. He had explored the channels of the Mississippi by its 
windings, falls and rapids, nearly five himdred miles above the 
point where Pike encamped, and terminated his exploration by 
water in 1806. It had brought him into personal acquaintance 
with all the leading chiefs of these expanded regions, and it is 
from this time that the Department of War dates the permanent 
establishment of its authority and laws among the leading tribes 
of the West and Northwest. 



24 



CHAPTER V. 

Low state of population in the lake covntnf in 1820 — Jvfuence of the erpedi- 
tion of (itn. Cass in brino-in^ it into notice — His hanliliood, earb/ rising, 
vij^ilarire, and uistemiou.iufss in travel — Treats ivith the Indians at Chicago, 
171 I8'2J — Interdicts Itidians resoj-ting to the depots in Canada, in 1822 — 
Plan for restoring a general peace among the7)iseh'es, hy settling their 
boimdaries — Treats irilh them at Prairie du Chien in 18',5, at Fond dii Lac 
in 182(1, and at Unties des Morts in 1827 — Purchases the Lead Mine 
countrrj of Galena, in Xorthern Illinois, in 1828 — Draws up a code of In- 
dian luics and reguUdions at Washington, in 1829 — Leaves the temtorij of 
.Michigan to assume the duties of Secretcmi of Jf'ar, in 1831 — Character of 
his civil administration in Michigan — His private character. 

The year 1S20 found the population and commerce of the upper 
lake at a low ebb. Small as ilie American population was, it had 
never recovered from the scathing- influence of the war. There 
was not a house west of Godfroy's trading station on the Huron, to 
the mouth of the KonoirJk, near Chicac;o. Chicago itself consisted 
of a few shabby logf buildings clustered about a small fort, and an 
Indian agency and blacksmith's shop. There was not a house, in 
a southern direction, between Craft's, four miles above the fort, 
and Peoria. In upper j\lichigan, which then included all Wiscon- 
sin, there were the antique and dilapidated French villages of Mi- 
chilimackinac, St. Ignace, St. ]\lary's. Green Bay and Prairie du 
Chien. Jn the present area of Iowa, there was a log house at the 
site of Dul)uque's grave. The fort at St. Peters had not been erect- 
ed, but the troops were in cantonment at Cold Spring, below St. 
Anthony's Falls. All the peninsula of Michigan — all Northern 
Indiana and Illinois, and all the present area of Wisconsin and 
Iowa, and the vast unincorporated regions north and west of them, 
with these small and far-scattered exceptions, was a perfect wilder- 
ness. The Wasbash, which now teems with population in its 
whole length, had not an inhabitant above the little incii)ient village 
of Clinton, some distance soutli of the Tippecanoe, and the Rac- 
coon Indian village at its source. 

The expedition of Gov. Cass had an important influence in 
bringing the whole country into notice. It revealed its agricul- 
tural, commercial, mineral and other resources, which had slum- 
bered unlinown and unnoticed, ab hiitio. It displayed a vast 
theatre for human industry, and the extension of civilization. Ac- 
counts of the exploration circulated rapidly and widely. The 
Narrative published at Albany, sold off in thirty days, ajid 
found its way to Europe. Besides the amount of geographical in- 
formation and natural history which was thrown before the public, 
the expedition revealed some unique and attractive districts of lo- 
cal scenery, which furnished aliment for popular literature, and it 
began, very soon, to be anticipated that the region of the upper 
lakes must, at no distant day, become a populous and important 
part of the Union. Time has fully verified these anticipations. 



25 

Five states are alreadv orcranized in a rec^ion, which in ]S:20 was 
tht more covert for a i'vw fur traders, aiul incipient villages around 
wi irh the aborigines roved in a state of wild, barbaric pride, and 
laljor-deprccialing independence. 

Gov. Cass, who participated freely in all the privations and ex- 
posures of the journey, and the hardships of the portages, and es- 
caliides up falls and over swamps of liquid mire, gave every faci- 
lity, to one and all. for the collection of objects illustrating the va- 
rious departments of natural history, and to the investigation and 
stu.lv of the topography and resources of the country. Some of 
his own notes on the curious rites and customs of the natives, found 
their way to the periodical and diurnal press, and served much to 
add to the interest with which the country began to be invested. 
He was, himself, eminently active and ready in every labor and 
emergency on the road, taking hold, with his own hands, in mud 
and mire, whenever tliere was a lift wanted. He was the earliest 
to rise, long before dawn, and wake the men from their heavy 
slumbers, and the most self-denying and abstemious in his habits; 
and those who have travelled with him, have learned this lesson, 
that success is the result of persevering toil and unintermitted dili- 
gence, united to habits of rigid temperance and self-denial in all 
things. Cold water and a bit of sailor's hard biscuit was his even- 
ing repast after a long day's toil, and this too, while younger 
members of his partj- sat down to roast or broil viands. 

He had it in his power, the next year after the close of this ex- 
tensive reconnoisance, to add to the newly revived and growing 
interest, by an extensive canoe journey, which he performed through 
the Miami of the lakes, the Wabash, the Ohio, the central parts of 
the Mississippi, and the Illinois. This extended tour occupied the 
summer of 1621, and terminated at Chicago, where he met the 
assembled tribes of the vicinitv, and formed a treaty, by which 
thev relinquished some five millions of acres of soil in Northern 
Illinois and Indiana, and in Western Michigan. This important 
treiiiv laid the foundation of the settlements which soon began to 
form in those fertile regions of the west, that are now the granaries 
and marts of so heavy and growing a commerce. For many years 
after Gen. Cass's appointment to the government of JMichigan, 
every barrel of flour and pork consumed west of the flag-stafT of 
Fort Gratiot, was brought from Ohio. It was not till 1S31-2 that 
whi at in bulk began to be brought down through the straits of 
Miciiilimackinac, and not till 1S33 that flour in barrels and bags 
began to follow the same track.* This reversal in the course of 
grain and breadstuffs to a market, marks an era in the settlements 
of the west, and signalizes an achievement in the liistory of civili- 
zation, greater than the most renowned battles. 

In IS22, Gov. Cass made a formal attempt, as Superintendent 
of Indian Affairs, to break up the periodical visits of the Indians of 
the United States to the depots of Canada. While these visits 
had the effect to let the Indians trample on the sovereignty of the 

• Private Journal. 



26 

country, and to keep aJive feelings of hostility in their breasts, it 
was observed that the amount of presents they received at these 
foreign depots, was no compensation for the time and means they 
pevoted to these journeys, and for the scenes of intemperance, want 
and sickness which they produced. It was evident, too, that by 
these annual subsidies, the Indians were kept in a state of vas- 
salage and fealty to the Briti.sh government, which, in the event 
of hostilities between the two countries, would renew the sanguin- 
ary scenes of the late war. 

As a further means of advancing their general condition, and of 
keeping them at peace with each other, he originated the plan of 
a general convocation of all the tribes of the north and we^t, in 
order to adjust and settle their boundary lines. This enlarged and 
humane policy, opens a new era in our Indian relations. The first 
assemblage of chiefs and delegates from all the Mississippi, Lake 
and Prairie tribes, took place, in J825, at Prairie du Chien, the an- 
cient TiPESAGEE of the A'gonquins, where the work was begun, 
and the main lines settled between nine of the leading tribes. This 
effort was continued in 1826, at Fond du Lac, at the iiead of Lake 
Superior, and was completed in 1827, at BuUes des Morts, on the 
Fox river of Wisconsin. 

In 1828 he purchased from the Winnebagoes, the district of 
country between the Illinois and river A?/. Feve, upon which mining 
operations had been commenced, and where the town of Galena 
now stands. From the time he had first been called on as a com- 
missioner to treat with the Indian tribes, in conjunction with Gen, 
Harrison in 1814, at Greenville in Ohio, he had evinced an aptness 
and ready comprehension of the Indian character, which led to his 
almost continual employment in negotiations of this kind, while he 
\yas Governor of Michigan. He had r.ot only absorbed the atten- 
tion of the general government, as most eminently fitted by his 
talents and experience for these trusts; but the various tribes of 
Indians, through whose chiefs and orators he had conducted the 
business and enforced the policy of the government, held his person 
and opinions in the highest respect. 

In 1829 he was called to Washington, with the late Gen. Clark 
of Misso'jii, to examine the various i.iws relative to Indian affairs, 
and prepaie a condensed code for the better government of that 
growing and complicated department. The report which he dre\T 
up on this occasion, (Vide Doc. 117, 2d sess., 2Uth Con., H. of R.,) 
exhibits the result of his full experien:e en this subject, and forms 
the basis of the present system of laws and regulations. In short, 
with whatever trust he had been invested, he evinced in its dis- 
charge a high order of talent, comprehensiveness of thought and 
superior powers of generalization. Gen. Jackson, whose intuitive 
knowledge of men has been seldom excelled, called him to preside 
over the department of war in 1831. 

A word may be said respecting his Michigan administration. 

He had now exercised the executive power in that Territory, since 

. jhe autumn of 1813, He had placed the Indian policy of the go- 



27 

vcrnment on a high basis. As a civil ruler, his administration 
liad been equally successful. A friend of equal lights — a believer 
in the full capacity of men for self-government — a practical exam- 
ple of the Jetlersonian doctrine that "honesty, capability and faith- 
fulness to the constitution" form the only safe test for ollice — and 
a scrupulous adherent to those fundamental principles of our system 
which regard the rights o( all, as emanating/ro/;/, and subject to, 
the judgment of all, he early in his administration gave such tone 
and inierpretation to the exercise of his official authority, under 
the territorial system, as lifted the citizens of a remote frontier, 
placed under a degree of political pupilage by the ordinance of 
1787, to the elementary privileges to which they have inherent 
right, under the full sovereignty, or state system. He was early 
ol opinion, as denoted on a recent occasion*, that "a more enlarged 
power has been exercised over the territories than is conveyed by 
the grant referred to." His policy, as his printed messages to the 
local legislature for nine consecutive years attest, was eminently 
democratic — eminently characterized for the non exercise of power 
which had not been clearly expressed ; and he freely gave the 
benefit of all doubts to those whoie best interests were concerned 
in solving them. All sound and well-considered popular opinions 
in matters of public duty, which were fairly expressed, came to 
him invested with authority. He improved the judiciary ; he fos- 
tered the militia system against all injudicious and ridiculous at- 
tempts to depress it, as one of the safe-guards of the constitution. 
He encouraged the system of primary school education to the full- 
est extent that the means of the people would bear — a system in 
which the State has taken high grounds, and is behind none of 
the States in its excellent organization. Tolerant and high-minded 
in his views of moral and religious instruction, he is known from 
first to last to have given his official sanction and influence to all 
without any sectarian discrimination. In his views of the criminal 
code, he leaned to the side of mercy, and a just discrimination be- 
tween crimes committed under shades of doubt or palliation, as to 
the degree of malice prepense governmg the act, and deeming the 
feature of solitary confinement capable of practical extension in 
some cases not provided for under the imperfection* of the code. 
" In fact," he observed in his last message to the legislature, *' the 
opinion gains ground through the civilized world, that human life 
has been too often sacrificed to unjust laws which seek the death 
of the offender rather than his reformation."! 

Such were the leading feat ires of his administration, and the 
era is referred to by the people, as their patriarchal days. His 
personal habits were equally mild. He mingled freely with the 
people. He did not withhold himself from iheir popular sports and 
festivities. Unostentatious and free of access, he was the friend 
and counsellor of all — poor as well as rich. His house was open 
to all. He was a friend and patron of worthy young men, of 

• ViJe letter lo Mr. Nicholson 24lh December, 1847. 
tMessage, Jan. 5, 1831. 



28 

character, to whom he was counsellor and cfuide. The distressed 
and perplexed citizen never came to his plain dwelliiirr in vain. 
An evidence of his innate kindness and ease of access to all, may- 
be given in the case of a butcher of the town, a plain and honest 
man, who holding a subordinate commission in the militia, bor- 
rowed his sword and belt for a parade, which he did not return for 
many years. Yet the borrower was never reminded of his remiss- 
ness, nor a petulent remark ever made on the subject. He min- 
gled so blandly in the social circle, and dressed so entirely like 
others, that a stranger would scarcely suspect his rank, were he 
not led to it, from the exalted tone and scope of his conversation. 
On one occasion, being on an interior journey, a person, to whom 
he was a stranger, complained to him of some fiaorant infraction 
of the laws, and being struck with the justness of his replies, asked 
his name. But as the General still kept himself incog., the dealer 
in the wilderness requested that he would represent the matter to 
Gov. Cass, at Detroit, whose just and manly character in admin- 
istering the laws, was a sure guaranty, he said, that he would 
redress the grievance at once. In truth, the traveling Ruler was 
in a remote part of Illinois, and far out of the boundaries of his 
civil jurisdiction. He could afTord to be facetious, where he had 
no power of redress. 

In his numerous and extensive journeys, his rule was to push, as 
well by day as night, till he had reached his point. He took but 
little repose himself, and expected others to limit this indulgence 
to the mere wants of nature. He applied the same restraint upon 
his appetite. He never traveled without books, or the latest peri- 
odicals, to fill up the tedium of the voyage. He often wrote during 
the pauses of the portage, and indeed some of his best and most 
eloquent essays and reviews, were written under these circum- 
stances, or during the intervals created by the diplomacy of an In- 
dian treaty. He never palliated sloth in himself or others, by the 
specious pretext of difficulty. His great object was to do proraptiv, 
what was to be done, and he soon convinced his companions that 
this was far easier, by a consistent and persevering course of eflbrts, 
than they supposed. 

In 1S25, a person calling himself John Dunn Hunter, appeared 
in London, and fell into the hands of the booksellers, who made 
him and his supposititious adventures in America, the subject of a 
volume in which the policy of the government respecting the In- 
dians was attacked, and the true character of the Americans, bj 
whom this adventurer had been entertained, basely maligned. 
Hunter, whom the writer knew, was, indeed, one of those bad and 
artijicial abort ions of circa instanct and education, of whifh the his- 
tory of our frontiers have given several notable examples, namely, 
a white child, kidnapped by the Indians in early life, and brought 
up with all the traits and moral obliquities and prejudices of an 
Indian, lu the case of Hunter, he was incapable alike of writing, 
or reasoning correctly on the causes whicli tend to make Indian 
society crumble before the spreading circle of industry and civiliza- 



29 

tion. Gen. Cass unniaskcd this impostor, and his book, in the 
pages of the North Ainericaii Review, in an earnest and glowing 
style of eloquence and bold disquisition, which commanded general 
attention. This article was penned on the portages of tlie Fox 
and Wisconsin rivers, while proceeding to the convocation of 
Prairie du Chien, in the summer of 18:25, and' finished in the 
pauses of that negotiation. In tlie 5oth number of the same work, 
he examined with a master's iiand, another question in our Indian 
polity, for which his extensive means of observation on aboriginal 
character, had amply qualified him. Few men in America exceed 
him in the extent and variety of his general reading. In 1829, 
he gave a signal proof of his close attention to local liistory, in a 
discourse of a high tone, before the Michigan Historical Society, 
and the next year he addressed the literary societies of Hamdton 
College, in a manner to elicit unmixed admiration. From this 
college he afterwards received the honorary degree of L L. D. 
His writings had previously procured him ;ui honorary mem- 
bership of the American Philosophical Society. Such were the 
literary habits and ready capacities of liis mind, during his resi- 
dence in the Wkst — where if he has shown himself to be a Frank- 
lin in his self-reliance in youth, he proved himself a Hampden in 
liis public policv, and mingled the wreaths of a scholar with those 
of a statesman and soldier. 



^ m • • * 



CHAPTER VI. 

He assumes the duties of the Jf'ar Department m \8'M — The advantages he 
possessed, J'ro III load knowledge in the ff'e,st,Jortlie duties of this ojjice — His 
policy in tlic exigencies of the removal of the Creeks from Georgia, and in 
the threatened civil war with South Carolina — He orders the survey of the 
hakes for mililari/ defence and commerce — He examines the nature of the 
title of the Indiana to the soil upon which theij hunt, and the rights of tlie 
States, and the United States, as fixed bij treaties — He advocates a cordon of 
posts to cover the western settlements — Scrutinizes the system of supplying 
the troops with rations and clothing — Introduces the sugar and lojfee ndions, 
and abolishes whiskey anil Sunday parades — Codifies the Indian laws, and 
reorganizes tlw. Indian department — He advocates a new system of fortifica- 
tion on the natural capacdy of America for maritime dcjence — Resume of 
his acts for six years — Gen. Jackson offers him the mission to France, with 
the privUege of visiting the East. 

No man, it is believed, had ever entered the War oflice with a 
fuller and more perfect knowledge of the wants, character and re- 
sources of the West, than Gen. Cass. He had seen the population 
north-west of the Ohio, winch stood at about ::0,0U0 in 1799, 
swell, as denoted by the census, to nearly 3,000, OUU,* spreading 

* The census nf 1840, namely of O.iio, Indianaj IHinois, Michigan, Wiscon- 
sin and Iowa, gives 2,967 ,S40. 



30 

over six states and territories — a population which, it is remarkable, 
is equal to that of the entire Union on the breaking out of the 
American revolution. He was familiar with the local features and 
circumstances of the country, and with its military, its industrial 
and its Indian history and policy. There was not a general section 
of it, wbich he had not personally seen, and owing to his great 
expedition of 1820, there were few men who had witnessed the 
Mississippi and its system of waters to the same extent that he had. 
With its great land system he was early familiar. Himself a 
pioneer, he was the friend of the class of pioneers to whose in- 
dustry and hardihood the nation is indebted for the settlement of 
the public lands. An associate of ihe men of the western forests, 
who earned their bread by the sweat of their brows, he was the 
advocate of low prices for their lands, and of the principle of a 
preemption right to the soil which their industry had cleared of 
the forest and their bravery defended against Indian and foreign 
enemies. He had been an early participator in western legislation, 
and devoted not a few years in administering its laws and in the 
building up of its institutions, political, moral and literary. 

These advantages enabled him to grasp the duties of this office, 
which is so largely charged with western interests, with a ready 
hand, and to give to its decisions a high and comprehensive cast. 
He came into ihe office when there were two topics of more than 
ordinary interest, which addressed themselves to this branch of the 
government. They were the question of the right of sovereignty 
set up by the Creek Indians of Georgia; and tlie attitude of re- 
sistance to the laws of the Union, assumed by South Carolina. 
Both subjects were fraught with peculiar ditficulties; the one, 
arising from treaties and constructions; the other, from an alleged 
but hitherto dormant power of negation to oppressive acts of Con- 
gress, contended for by this state under the term of nullification, 
and averred by her to exist as a part of the undefined sovereign 
power of all the states — thus striking with a bold hand at the root 
of the confederacy. Happily, an actual collision was avoided in 
both cases, by the care with which the instructions to the local au- 
thorities were drawn up, and the necessity imposed of a constant 
reference, in every emergency, to the department. In this exigen- 
cy, Gen. Cass withdrew all power of military collision from the 
local commander of the troops in Carolina, reserving it exclusively 
for executive action. " Should, unfortunately, a crisis arise," he 
writes to Gen. Scott, " when the ordinary power in the hands of 
the civil officers should not be sufficient for the execution of the 
law?, the President will determine the course to be taken and the 
measures to be adopted ; till then you are prohibited from acting." 
The same caution is observed in relation to Alabama. " You 
will, he writes to Major Mcintosh, October 29, 1833, " interpose 
no obstacle to the service of legal process upon any ofiiccr or sol- 
dier under your command, whether issuing from the courts of the 
state of Alabama, or of the United States." The whole tone of 
the despatches issued under these trying occasions, exhibits an 



31 

cminontly conservative spirit, and respect for the supremacy of the 
civil auihorily within llie limits uf the respective states. 

In 1832, General Cass, in an elaborate disquisition, examined 
the question of the original titie of the native trihes to the fee 
simple and sovereignty of the soil, as understood and acted on by 
other nations, together with the relative duties of the States and of 
the United States, growing out of treaties with the Indian tribes. 
This article, which set forth the policy of tlie government, on the 
ri<Tl)t of sovereignty claimed by the Indians, was subsequently 
published in the Globe newspaper for general circulation, and it 
may be regarded as settling that policy under our government. 

In 1S34, the entire Indian code was revised, under his direction, 
on the basis of his prior report of 1829, and the new code enacted 
bv Congress. He brought forward the policy of covering the 
western settlements by a cordon of military posts, stretching from 
St. Anihony's southweswardly to the Kio Koxo* and Texas, and 
connecting the chain by a military road, on which troops and mu- 
nitions of war could be readily and conveniently moved. By thus 
casting a shield around the newly formed and feeble settlements, 
their prosperity was rapidly advanced, and the line of settlement 
enlarged. He had lived in the west during the long period of In- 
dian ambuscades and murders, which terminated in the mossacre 
of Fort Mimms, and the butchery of the command of Maj. Dade 
in Florida; and he wished to provide, by a systematic distribution 
of the army, against the recurrence of like events from a ruthless 
and capricious foe. He scrutinized the organization of the army, 
and examined into the condition of the common soldier. It was 
jndd this review of the military arm, with a view both to its 
further efFiciency and economy, that he abolished the spirit ration, 
and substituted sugar and coffee in lieu of it. He also took mea- 
eures to further the same high object, in the department of cloth- 
ing, and in mitigating the duties unnecessarilv exacted of them on 
the Sabbath day, while in garrison. He directed a military re- 
coimoisance of the lakes, as a proper ndjimct of that system of the 
coast survey, which is so essential to the commercial and naval 
interests of these internal seas. Under his direction, large portions 
of the public domain were acquired by treaty, in Ohio, Indiana, 
Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin and Iowa. Economy was introduced 
into the Indian system ; and the whole class of duties which are 
devolved upon that bureau, remodelled and placed on a new basis 
of oriranization, bv which the spirit of prior laws was retained, and 
their principles suited to the altered condition and circumstances 
of the tribes.t 

But one of the chief points of his policy in the war department, 
and that for which, it is believed, he is preeminently entitled to 
the thanks of the nation, is that of the system of fortifications, 
which he examined in a luminous report in 1833. Hitherto this 
system had been greatly misunderstood. Gen. Cass saw that our 
defences of a line of coast of two thousand miles in extent, must 
• Red River. t Doc. 117, XX Con., 2 Scs. H. of R. 



32 

be essentially upon the ocean. Maritime, and among the first of 
the maritime powers of thu worUl, our sirenglh on tliat element 
must, he believed, progress and become permanent. The line of 
defences, therefore, should be so constructed as to aid the naval 
arm, and render it eflective. Navies must be resisted by navies, 
and not by immense fortresses raised at every assailable point 
where a naval I'orce might anchor. Tlien indeed, every cstmiry, 
bay, strait, and neck of land between the bay of Pas-^amaquoddy 
and th<^ montli of the Mississippi, must be bristled with cannon. 
Tiie principles of this report were approved bv General Jackson 
and by Congress, which awarded to hiui the highest praise for its 
comprehensive and maslerly positions. For six years General 
Cass directed the operations of the war office. He had successfully 
concluded the removal of the Creeks from Georgia and Alabama. 
He had stood in the breach between the United States and South 
Carolina. He had improved the organization of the army. He 
had reformed the Indian code. He had opened up and recom- 
mended a system of fortifications, by which millmns are secured 
to the nation, and the policy of a national defence placed on its 
true basis. He had by no means found his vigor cramped in this 
new sphere of duties. He had, at every step, risen with it, and 
above it. He had fully redeemed the judgment placed on his 
powers and ability by all. 

In 1836 Gen. Jackson tendered him the position of minister to 
France. This he accepted, with the express privilege of visiting 
the EAST — the cradle of mankind. And in yielding this permit, 
the President caused instructions to the naval officers in the Medit- 
teranean, to be jilaccd in his hands, with a view to give everv fa- 
cility in enabling him to execute his purpose. To visit the Nile 
and the Jordan, the ruins of Thebes and Balbec, and to tread the 
plains which are associated with the most celebrated earlv strug- 
gles of man for power and supremacy, had formed an early ex- 
pressed wish of his mind. He had visited the sources of the Mis- 
sissippi ; he had seen the magnificence of the west, now just be- 
ginning to feel the influence of an increasing population, and it was 
a high [)hilosophical desire to put his feet upon the pyramids, and 
to stand on the sites of ancient Ti-oy and Marathon, where the old 
nations had so heroically struggled for liberty. He prepared to 
accept this mission, by resigning the portfolio of the war office. He 
had now been twenty-four years in the public service, in various 
capacities. He had made himself intimatelv acquainted with the 
])liysical character, capacities, interests and resources of the coun- 
try. His experience had qualified him to judge, not only of its 
true character, but of its true relations to Europe. He went fo'rth 
doubly armed to the field of European diplomacy. Apt, bold, en- 
ergetic in act, cautious and conciliating in manners, and far-reach- 
ing in his views and policy, he was now placed on a new theatre 
of action. But whatever might be his policy in France or Europe, 
all who l.tiew him felt confiilcnt of this, that he went abroad with 
a thoroughly imbued American heart, glowing with patriotism, 



33 

which could never allow him to sit still while the dearest interests 
of his country, by land or sea, were at stake. Such was Lewis 
Cass on entering the baniers of Paris, in the summer of 1830. 
Twenty-four vcars had made the dilTerence between Cass on ttie 
Tarontee and Cass at the Tuilleries, but he was the same man. 
He wielded the same pen. Mis actions were governed by the same 
HBAD and hkakt. To thinic largely hail been the original force 
©f his mind, and he could never contemplate his country as des- 
tined to occupy any but the very highest place in the family of na- 
tions. 



% m 9 » • 




CHAPTER VII. 

Hii lus:h course of po'.in/ ns .hncriran JJmhnastulor at the Court of France — 

land 

into 

authorfti/, a<rninst the rattficatlon of this trcatij by France — Is sustained brj 

Vie latter — His course is approved by the American Government — Triumph 

of a great principle. 

The freedom of the seas is a principle dear to every American 
heart. The naval supremacy of England had been growing from 
the time that the fleets of Oliver Cromwell had succeeded in 
humbling the overbearing maritime pride of Holland, till the 19th 
day of August, 1812, when Isaac Hull completely dismantled a 
prime British frigate, sweeping every mast and spar overboard in 
thirty minutes. For a long period before this decisive action, 
which ushered in a brilliant series of naval triumphs to our arms, 
England had been the undisputed mistress of the ocean, and after 
the battles of the Nile and Trafalgar there was no nation of Europe 
which could successfully resist her. That so proud a nation as 
Ennfland — a nation having so many reasons indeed, for national 
pride in every department of arts and arms, should also become 
arrogant and set up a right not only to scrutinize ond watch the 
commerce of the globe, by which she thrives, but also to board 
and search the ships of all stations, under various pretences, is 
known to the world. Nor was it an easy task for America* to 
resist successfully this indignity to the flag of the United States. 
It was ONE of ttie declared causes of the war of 18l2,t which was 
fought on the ocean under the often repeated popular motto of 
" free trade and sailor's rights." 

It could not have been anticipated, however, that a colonel of 
ciTizKN voLUNTKF.RS, who had been the first oflicer to meet and 
successfully repel the British land forces on a very distant Indian 

•This term is according to British u«a?e, applied to the United States. 
tVide Mr. Madison's Message, lit June, 1812. 

3 



34 

frontier in 1812, should also, in a few years appear in Paris — the 
confessedly central point of the world's civilization, to interpose an 
effective check to the further exercise of this self-assumed right of 
Great Britain on the high seas. Yet such was the service which 
Gen. Cass rendered to his country as ambassador to the French 
Court. 

The question did not assume the right of impressment — that 
right, at least under that name, had been suffered quietly to go to 
sleep after the war of 1812. But its spirit and essence remained, 
and took the shape of a prescriptive right in her naval commanders 
to visit the vessels of foreign nations, for the purpose, as already 
expressed by her, of guarding against the further extension of the 
slave trade. For the purpose of reaching this universal supervi- 
sion, and in order to fortify herself in the controlling exercise of 
this right, a treaty was secretly negotiated and signed at London, 
under British auspices in 1841, between her and the crowns of 
Russia, Austria, Prussia and France. By this treaty of quintuple 
ALLIANCE, (vide art. Sth,) " each of the high contracting parties 
which may choose to employ cruisers for the suppression of th« 
slave trade, and to exercise the matured right of search, reserves 
to itself to fix, according to its own convenience, the number of the 
ships of war which shall be employed on the service stipulated in 
the second article of the present treaty, as well as the stations on 
which the said ships shall cruise." By the 5th article it further 
provides that "the cruisers of the high contracting parties shall 
mutually afford to each other assistance in all cases where it may 
be useful, that they should act in concert^ In other words, and 
practically considered, the other four powers stipulate to aid Great 
Britain in any of her continued attempts to tyrannize on the high 
seas, in which the local commanders of her vessels may deem it 
" useful" — that is to say, useful for any purpose whatsoever which 
may cloak the " right of search" under zeal for humanitarian, or 
open constabulary purposes. 

The right of search, under any form, is alarming to Americans, 
whose commerce and seamen have solongand so ingloriously smart- 
ed under it. And Gen. Cass no sooner heard of this treaty be- 
tween the Five Powers, than he seized his pen, and drew up, 
anonymously, under the title of " An Examination," a powerful 
appeal to the European public on the subject. His strong sense 
of nationality fired at the idea of the future injuries and indignities 
which the natural operation of such a treaty foreboded to American 
commerce. It was riot, it is true, a treaty to which the United 
States was asked to affix her assent or withhold her dissent. But 
it was a treaty which affected her rights, in one of their most vital 
parts ; and he could not consent to sit still, bound as it were, by 
the forms of official etiquette, and see one of the dearest rights of 
his country sacrificed at a foreign court. He had once indignantly 
snapped his sword in war, when the treachery and cowardice of 
his commander prevented his using it against the enemy, and he 
now cast away the cords of court etiquette, by a bold appeal to the 



35 

true source of opinion in wliicli he concealed his name under the 
tille of "An American." In this appeal, he did not conieiu him- 
self by secondary views, or suffer a po[)ular subject to run into mere 
declatnation. His paper rose to a far hic^her standard, and evinced 
the powers of a logician and a statesman. He took up the subject 
upon its broad merits, and treated it with a luminous force. 

" We have no desire," says Gen. Cass, " to prevent the British 
cruisers from seizins^ vessels not being- American — but bearing the 
American (lag — all the United States insist upon, is the security 
of their own vessels." 

*■ They do not deny to the cruisers of all the powers of the 
earth, to enter and search each the vessels of their own country, 
and every other, which may concede the privilege, though the flag 
of the United States may fly at all their mast heads. But they do 
deny the right of any such cruiser to search thkir vessels; and 
here lies the root of the whole matter. Cer'.ainly, if a British 
or French frigate encounters a vessel at sea, which is most 
assurediv, a British or French vessel, endeavoring to conceal her 
nationality under the American Jlag, such frigate is justified in 
boarding her, and in disposing of her as the law of her country 
may provide. But this is done at the risk of the boarding shzp.^^ 

" A perpetual right to stop, to search and to seize, is one thing. 
A casual act of trespass, coficeded to be such, excused by peculiar 
circumstances, and immediately acknowledged and atoned for, is 
another. The latter may be pardoned. The former is intolerable. 
The commander of the boarding vessel is precisely in the condi- 
tion of a sherifT's officer who, with a writ against A arrests B. 
Now, on a trial in an action of trespass, which B might institute 
for this assault and battery, what would be the measure of damages 
which an intelligent jury would apply to the case? They would 
adopt the same rule we have already laid down in the case of the 
commander. If the officer had strong reason to mistake the iden- 
tity of B, and to suppose he was A, and if he had conducted him- 
self with perfect propriety, and had really committed no injury, he 
would he dismissed with nominal damages — damages which, 
while they asserted the great principle of liberty, would yet be 
perfectly valueless in their amount, leaving the ill-advised com- 
plainant to pay the costs. Such is the illustration of our maritime 
subject. In this manner the principle is saved, and fliitrrant abuses 
prevented; and why the naked principle is inL-alciiiabiy valuable 
to the United States, is obvious. Upon it turns the claim of im- 
pressment. The exercise of that claim, as we have seen, is the 
consequence of a legal right of entry. So long as this entry is 
illegal, so lonsr the American seamen are, by British confession, 
safe from the British power."* 

This appeal, which, under the title of An Examination of the 
Right of Sf.arch, was published at Paris early in 1S42, was ex- 

•An Eximinniion of t'.e Question now in Discussion between the American 
anJ British Govfrnmenis, concernin? the right of search. By an Ameri- 
ca. i. Paris, H. Fournier, 7 Rue St. Benoil ; p. 77. 



36 

tensively circulated and road in the court circles of Europe, and 
particularly aroused the attention of the French court, which had 
not yet ratified the treaty. At the court of London it was de- 
nounced ill the papers as an audacious departure from the ordinary 
course of dipluniacy ; and Gen. Cas.*, who was supposed to be the 
author of it, was berated in tlie Times newspapers, in no very 
measured terms, for his alleged interference in continental politics. 
In an article of the 5th January, JS42, that paper observes that the 
five powers which signed the treaty " will not allow themselves to 
be thcarted in the execution of the arrangement by" what it is 
pleased to term " the capricio\is resistance of the Cabi7iet of Wash- 
ington.'''' 

A formal " reply"* to it was prepared, under the sanction of the 
British g(jvernnient. and published at London, about two months 
after, which is attributed to the pen of Mr. Gore Ousley. It is 
clear, both from the source and mariner of this reply, that the 
"American" had urged home a vital subject with acknowledged 
power. But Gen. Cass did not stop here. The pamphlet had 
served to call attention to the vital importance of the policy of the 
treaty, and thus one object was gained. He saw, at once, that 
measures of the public policy of Europe and European courts which 
affect the " weal or woe" of nations are clearly amenable to public 
OPINION. To this he added the weight of his ofiicial character by 
drawing up a formal and elaborate, but glowing protest to the 
French government against the ratification of the treaty. He 
did this wholly on his own responsibility. He had no instructions 
whatever on the subject, as he frankly stated this fact to Mr. Guizot, 
the Minister of Foreign Affairs. He believed that when the in- 
terests of his country were at stake, it was no time to doubt and 
dally. Before instructions could be called for, the ratifications of 
treaty might have been exchanged. What was to be done, must 
be done quickly. B'lt he had neither mistaken the views or in- 
terests of his OWN, or of the Fkench government. His action was 
approved by both. The American government sanctioned all he 
had done, and the French refused to ratil'y the quintuple treaty. 
Thus he foiled a bold and secret measure, which it is h"ped is the 
last attempt that England will ever make by clandestine combina- 
tions with the weaker and second rate naval powers of Europe to 
revive the odious doctrines of the general right of search on the 
high seas, under any pretext wlu'tever. 

Let Europe's princes in; potently try 

The fifp-tiorn limits of fi eedom's sons to tie, 

Those etrotts on themselves shall ever turn, 

And higher still the llame of freedom burn. ' 

•Lonlon, John Rodwcll, 46 New Bond street, 1842, p. Ill, witli an appen- 
dix, p. 62. 



37 



CHAPTER VI n. 

He scrutinizes the Poliq/ of Mr. Ti/lcr, tvhlk occupiflnis the Executive Chair, 
to see the enforremrni of the pr'mriple oh'rrtcl to ,ii the Quintujilc Tredtji, 
carried out in tlie nru;oli<ttio)is hcturcn .Mr. tf'chstrr (iiid Lonl .Ishhnrion, 
and in the provisions of the Treaty which follow — (hi learning that this 
point was pa.'ised sub silent io, he resii^ns his post at the hYeneti Court, and 
prepares to return to tlie United States — His reasons for this — Tlie Oregon 
Boundarrj difficulties foretold. 

The defeat of the quintuple treaty still engajred the concfratula- 
tions of Ainerioans in all ([uarters, and drew public aitentioti stronp- 
ly to the character of Clen. Cass, to whose satracity and ability the 
nation owed this public service, when the British and American 
governments became deeply involved in the diplomatic controversy 
growing out of the question of the nortli-eastern boundary. This 
question had remained a topic of discussion from the date of the treaty 
of Ghent, one of the articles of which reaffirmed the clear and un- 
questionable right of the United Slates to all the territory within 
its north-eastern boundary, up to the north-easleni angle of Nova 
Scotia, as defined in the original proclamation of the British 
crown, organizinij that province, and recognized in the definitive 
treaty of peace of 1783. Surveys, and a reference to a foreign 
court, had proved equally unsatisfactory in coming to an adjust- 
ment, and rather served to give complexity to a question which 
had, at first, appeared too plain to admit of two opinions. But 
while diplomacy spread out its casuistical chain over eight and 
twenty years, the progress of the settlements, bo'h on the Ameri- 
can and British borders of the large angle of country in dispute, 
gave the highest interest to the question in 1S42, and brought the 
two governments into a fierce diplomatic conflict. The settlements 
of the state of Maine, which had been pushed to the Aristook and 
the channel of the St. John's, were how become too important for 
either parly to relinquish. Those of the British, in the Province 
of New Brunswick, would, by such relinquishment, be cut off from 
a direct communication with Quebec, hy admitting the American 
rinht, in all its original crtetil. Congress, in view of possible and 
apprehended hostilities, finally authorized the Hresidcnt of the 
United States to use the whole land and naval force of the Union, 
to maintain its just right. The British persisted in their ultra 
views, and reinforced their northeastern rrarrisons. 

The discussion was transferred from the custody of the Ameri- 
can minister at London, direct to Washincrton, and a minister ex- 
traordinary sent lliere in the pprson of Lord Ashburton, to advocate 
the British view. l\Ir. Webster, the then Secretary of State, took 
the matter into his own hinds on the part of the United States. 
A question of elementary "feorrrapliy laid at the bottom of the 
entire controversy, and this owed its orisfiu to Briti-;h ingenuity. 
It was simply this: whether the bay of Passamiquoddy, the reci- 
pient of the St. John's river, was a part of the Northern Atlantic ? 



38 

Whoever reads Mr. Bradly's argument on this point in 1S22, or 
Mr. Buchanan's able expose of the whole subject in the Senate of 
the United Slates in 1841, need not express a doubt on which side 
the T\^hl lay. Other parts of the interior boundary became 
secondary to this, and when tlie line of dividintr waters, was too 
serrated for a national boundary, it was to be adjusted, most evi- 
dently on the principle of a compromise, although the grounds of 
such a compromise had been too broadly and lavishly for the 
United States, laid down under the king of the Netherlands — the 
only umpire in the matter. 

CI en. Cass had wa'ched the progress of this discussion from his 
position at Paris, with deep interest, during the whole course of 
his six years residence at that court. He saw, as the question 
drew to a head, in 1842, that the British government had made a 
primary point of excluding the Americans from the valley of the 
Madawasca, and were determined not to jeopard the prosperity of 
their northeastern colonies, by leaving tlie principal line of their 
mail communication between two of them, to run through the ter- 
ritory of the Americans. And it appeared to him the appropriate 
time, following as it did, so soon on the triumph at Paris of the 
defeat of the claimed right of visitation to our vessels on the hio-h 
seas, as embraced in the quintuple treaty, to engraft a recogni- 
tion of the principle of that triumph in the pending treaty. That 
the American flag, wherever its use is just and bona fide, and it 
has not been run up to cover an unlawful traffic either by other 
nations, or by derelict Americans, should shield its commerce and 
seamen, at all times, and in ;ill places, the world over, is too dear 
a principle ever to be lost sight of. Or if the time had not arrived 
for this declaration, to be made in any form, in a public treaty, by 
Great Britain, it was hoped, and the American minister in Paris 
felt his very functions as an ambassador poised on this hope, that 
the right of search or visitation, for any specific purpose, however 
glozrd over in diplomatic phraseology, would have been relin- 
quished, or provided against. The very subject — the suppression 
of the Slave Trade, the disgrace of Christian Europe, which had 
formed the basis of the right of search, so adroitly introduced into 
the quintuple treaty, was adjusted by an agreement lo keep up a 
stipulated force on the African coast, though it was entered into, 
on the false theory that Great Britain felt a deeper interest in the sup- 
pression of thisodious traffic than Americans, or had been an earlier 
or sificerer advocate in the cause. The world knows that neither 
assumption had been true. She had followed in our footsteps in 
declaring the traffic piracy. It is also known to Christendom ihat 
while both a sober appearance and an affected poetic phrenzy of 
sentiment is cherished in England, for African freedom, the policy 
of the British government sanctions and upholds a most unrighteous 
system of three-fold, and deep-sea'.ed s'averv of birth, of cast, and 
civil condition, throughout the hundred millions of Asiatics who 
are under her military dominions and control in India. 

This matter apart, however. But while America cedes by the 



39 

Ashburton treat}' of 1842, a part of the soil and jurisdiction of one 
of the territorial appendaf^^es of the original Thiuteen States, and 
waives the settlement of tlie entire boundary, between the United 
Slates and the British Possessions, beyond a limited point in the 
West, there is not the slitrhtest allusion to the recojjnilion and the 
principle contended for, and nobly won, by the diplomatic skill and 
iiigh toned American feeling of the American minister at Paris. 
In truth, jMr. Webster, ahhough directed to sanction the course of 
Gen. Cass in the matter of the quintuple treaty, appears to have 
felt inducements to let that matter pass in utter silence, and when 
the American minister pressed him on that point, he defended the 
omission, not on the ground that the point could not have been 
carried, but that the introduction of such a principle into the treaty, 
would have been anti-diplumatic. Gen. Cass had felt no such 
scruples to fetter his free aclion on the right of search at Paris; 
nor did he feel the pertinency or force of the exculpatory considera- 
tions addressed to him by the American Secretary on this subject. 
It is needless, we apprehend, to do more than to refer to the ani- 
mated correspondence between these gentlemen to place the 
American minister, or the American citizen (for the correspondence 
was continued after Gen. Cass's return) in the most favorable and 
elevated light. Its searching truth, its patriotic tone, and its pun- 
gent point, have seldom been equalled. 

So important did this question appear to Gen. Cass, and so 
vitally wound up with our maritime honor and national character, 
that he determined, on being apprised of the character of the, so 
called, Ashburton treaty, on this head, to resign the post which he 
held at the French Court, justly concluding that an administration 
which appeared to want the stability of purpose and high tone to 
carry out a measure of such high moment to our maritime honor 
and interests, could not stand in need of his continued services. 
The news of this treaty reached Paris in September, and he im- 
mediately wrote a dispatch tendering his resignation as minister. 

"My protest of 13th of February," he observes, in his letter to 
the Secretary of State, "distinctly asserted that the United States 
would resist the pretension of England to search our vessels. I 
avowed, at the same time, that this was but my personal declara- 
tion, liable to be confirmed or disavowed by mv government. I 
now find a treaty has been concluded between Great Britain and 
the United States, which provides for the co-operation of the latter 
in efibrts to abolish the slave trade, but which contains no renun- 
ciatioJi by the former, of the extraordinary pretension, resulting, 
as she said, from the exigencies of these very efforts; and which 
pretension I felt it my duly to denounce to the French govern- 
ment.* In all this, 1 presume to offer no farther judgment, than 

•This was not the only point of public policy violated or neslected by the 
Ashburton Ireaiy. Tiie whole boundary line, was expected to have been 
settled to the Pacific, nnd woXa part only. The imi>ortance to Great Britain, 
of i-ecurins the \. E. ansle of .Nova Scotia, ^o^m^d a powerlul dasis for »uch 
exleusion of the line. In a letter published in the London Morning Chroni- 



40 

as I am personally affected by the course of the procepdin<T, and I 
feel they have placed me in a false position, whence I can escape 
but by returning home with the least possible delay." 



* * » » > 



CHAPTER IX. 

His departure from France — He lands at Boston, and is received icith congrat- 
ulMions b>j the citizens of that ritij and otfirr towns, jvho throng; to meet 
him, on his waif home to .Michigan, and hail him as the future l^resident — 
Gen. Jackson offers him a specicd proof of the eminent services he has ren- 
dered his countri/ hy defeating the (Quintuple Treaty — The state in ivhich 
he found the country — He is returned to the U. S. Senate — His high course 
of policy on the Oregon question, and the .Mexican war — His efforts in put- 
ting the country in a complete state of defence — Triumph of his measures — 
He is nominated for the Presidency at Baltimore by more than two-thirds of 
the entire number of delegates. 

Gen. Cass, during his residence at the Court of France, visited 
the countries embalmed in classic historv, bordering on tlie Medi- 
terranean, and threw out, in a popular form, some just observa- 
tions upon that ancient tlieatre of human power, which it ma}' be 
pertinent, cursorilv to notice in the sequel as rather belonging to 
the consideration of his private, or semi-official, than public char- 
acter. In Paris, his hotel, situated in the Italian quarter of the 
Boulevards, was the resort of all Americans, and of men of science 
and letters, and was characterized bv an open hospitaliiv, and re- 
fined ease, which reflected the highest credit upon his country. 
And the accumulations of no little part of his fortune, gained amid 
scenes of trial and privation, on the American frontiers, were thus 
nobly applied to one of the highest of human purposes — namely, 
the taking by the hand, in a strange land, of his worthy country- 
men. We saw him in these scenes of elegant reception ; and had 
also seen him, at prior times, at the utmost limits of the far west, 
and he was the same cordial, frank, dec sive and dignified man, 
ever impulsive in a good cause, and zealous in the advancement 
of every great interest which concerned the honor or prosperity of 
his country, or its literature, arts and character. His manners were 
equally mild and urbane on the sources of the Mississippi, and 
in the purlieus of the Champs Ehjsees and the Rue Italieii. As a 
representative of his government, at the court which first acknow- 
ledged American indept'udence, he might, m many traits, be re- 
garded as a Dr. Franklin. His republican manners, and personal 

cle, on the 13ih Septpmber, 1S42, by an Aniprican in London who hnd liren 
familiar wilh llic West, Ihis omission lo sccurr llie lioiindary to tlie Fscitic, 
is Plroncly insisted on, and tlie dan-jcr* of a collision wilh Great I'ritnin on 
the subject of OrP2on, slated with almost a prophetic truth. Vide N. Y. 
Evening Post, 3J November, 1842. 



41 

habits, insured him afrainst many of the anno\-anres of mere court 
furins. }Ie was, it is believed, tiie only minister plenipotentiary at 
that pay court, who could, if he chose it, go into the streets of 
Paris without a carriage, or a servant in livery. 

On the annunciation of his intention to quit Paris, the American 
citizens in that city united in a public demonstration of iluir res- 
pect; and the Atlantic but served to part him from the warm 
hearts and uplifted hands which were ready to welcome liim to 
his native shores. He landed at Boston, in the month of Decem- 
ber, 1842, The citizens of that place, without distinction of party, 
united in welcoming: his return, and offerinp him their hosj)itali- 
ties. "The undersigned, citizens of New England," they write 
on the 7th December, " would congratulate your Excellency on 
your safe return to your native country, after your FAiTiiFrL ser- 
vices AND ENERGETIC PROCEEDINGS, at an important crisis in your 
distinguished /nission, and respectfully request, that you will give 
them and their fellow ciiizens an opportunity of expressing person- 
ally the high respect which your public career, and private vir- 
tues had uniformly inspired." 

The country was, at that juncture, beginning to canvass the 
question of a successor to Mr. Tyler, an individual who had exer- 
cised 'he Presidential ofTice, not through the expression of the bal- 
lot box, but by the Providential demise of Gen. Harrison. And 
the eyes of many were cast to Gen. Cass, from the east and the 
•west, as the proper person for that exalted station. Indeed, the 
earliest indication of this feeling had appeared a twelvemonth 
before in a leading journal of New York.* 

The Progress of Gen. Cass homeward, was a scene of continued 
welcome. He was cheered in New York by the audience of the 
theatre rising simultaneously in their places, and one city and town 
after another, offered him their congratulations and hospitalities, till 
he reached his dwelling at Detroit, in Michigan, where he fixed 
his residence, shortly after the battle of the Thames in lbl3, when 
he had assumed the duties of Governor of the Territory. At this 
place, while he had addressed himself diligently to his private af- 
fairs and fortune, which had suflered much during his long absence 
in France, he received letters of congratulation from all (juaitersof 
the Union. These letters ^^ ere filled with hopes that he would 
permit his name to be used as a candidate for President of the 
United States in the approaching election of 1S43, for which he 
was nominated at Harrisburg, in Pennsylvania. 

Gen. Jackson wrote to him from his retirement at the Hermit- 
age, in the warmest terms of approbation of his foreign, as well 
as domestic public services. " I shall ever recollect, my dear 
General," says the venerable patriot, '• with great satisfaction, the 
relations, both private and official, which subsisted between us 
during the greater part of my administration. Having full con- 
fidence in your abilities and republican principles, 1 invited you to 
my cabinet; and lean never forget with what discretion and 
• ViJe New York Eve. Post. 



42 

talents you met those great and delicate questions which were 
brought before you whilst you presided over the department of 
war, which entitled you to the thanks, and will be forever recol- 
lected with the most lively feelings of friendship by me. 

" But what has endeared you to every true American, was the 
noble stand which you took, as our Minister at Paris, against the 
quintuple treaty, and which by your talents, energy and fearless 
responsibility, defeated its ratification by France — a treaty intended 
by Great Britain to change our international laws, make her mis- 
tress of the seas, and destroy the national independence, not only 
of our country, but of all Europe, and enable her to become the 
tyrant on every ocean. 

" Had Great Britain obtained the sanction of France to this 
treaty, (with the late disgraceful treaty of Washington, so disre- 
putable to our national character, and injurious to our national 
safety,) then indeed we might have hung our harps upon the wil- 
lows, and resigned our national independence to Great Britain. 
But, I repeat, to your talents, energy, and fearless responsibility, 
we are indebted for the shield thrown over us from the impending 
danger, which the ratification of the quintuple treaty by France, 
would have brought upon us. For this act, the thanks of every 
true American, and the applause of every true republican, are 
yours: and for this noble act I tender you my thanks." 

In this judgment of the war-worn veteran and time-honored sage 
of the Hermitage, the democracy of the nation concurred, and the 
general convention which assembled to nominate a President, in 
the spring of 1843, gave him a majority of votes. Conflicts of 
opinion, however, existed in some of the states of the republic, in 
which the claims of favorite candidates were urged on sectional 
grounds; and the result was, a compromise of opinions, based on 
the principle of a two-thirds vote. This could be obtained only 
by a resort to a new candidate ; and for this purpose, a plain citizen 
of worth, and well-tried firmness of principle, was selected from 
the mass of the people, in the person of J\Ir. Polk of Tennessee. 
No one acquiesced in this selection with more cordiality than Gen, 
Cass, who although he had now, for years, relinquished public 
speaking, took an active part in the canvass, visiting difl^erent and 
distant parts of the union, and exerting his bold and fine talents 
efficiently for the success of the designated individual. 

The elevation of Mr. Polk to the presidency in 1844, marks a 
new era in a government of popular opmion and equal rights, and 
has proved the entire capacity of the popular power to grapple, in 
a sjiirit of moderation, with those conflicts in the canvass for the 
SuPREMK Office, which have assailed corrupted, and in the end, 
overthrown ancient republics. 

Gen. Cass, on his return from France, found the country involved 
with Great Britain in a controversv about that very boundary be- 
tween the United States and the Canadas, which had been so in- 
judiciouslv dropped or hushed up, l)y a local coinpromise of its 
eastern limits, in the Ashburton treaty. The annexation of Texas 



e 



43 

had also led to the most unfriendl\', and indeed insnltincr rnijrse, 
on the part of IMexico, who anprily handed the American minister 
his ])at.sports, recalled her minister from Washington, refused to 
entertain negotiations, thougli frequently pressed, and hurled empty 
threats and bravado against the government and people of the 
Uniied States, which were equally unjust to her character, and 
ofTensive to her pride. 

Under these circumstances, Gen. Cass could hardlv expect long 
to preserve his retirement, and keep out of the councils of his coun- 
try. As soon as a vacancy occurred in the Senate, from that state, 
Michigan urged his acceptance of that elevated station — the high- 
est in her gift — and he was returned to that body, on the installa- 
tion of the new administration in 1S44. A man of less experience, 
firmness and promptitude of character, would have doubted as to 
the policy which duty to his country demanded of him. But he 
had scarcely well taken his seal, in December of that year, when 
he laid before the Senate resolutions of inquiry for putting the 
entire land and naval forces of the country in an attitude of pre- 
paration and defence, to meet the probable exigencies of the crisis. 
Gen. Cass fell the honor and prosperity of his country deeply in- 
volved in these discussions. An enlarged experience, and a liberal 
knowledge of history, had convinced him that every additional ship 
at sea, or division on land, added a ten-fold force to a minister's 
argument; that, in fine, to prepare manfully for war, was the surest 
means of preserving peace; and if, with these precautions, peace 
could not be preserved, war itself might be undertaken with efTect. 
Such were the leading principles of his opening speech, on the 
consideration of his resolutions, which were carried, in debate, 
and referred to appropriate committees. He was himself placed 
on the committees of foreign and nulitary affairs; and as chairman 
of the latter, he prepared and matured a large share of the impor- 
tant measures which characterized that committee during the ar- 
duous sessions of '47 and '48. 

In the discussion of the Oregon question, he maintained the 
full and complete right of the United States, both by discovery and 
title, issuing from treaties with France and Spain, to the entire Pa- 
cific coast, reaching to the Russian boundary at north latitude 54 
deg. 40 min. He defended the right with great ability, eloquence 
and conclusive force. Bold, free, and without disguise of senti- 
ment or policv, his advocacy of this extreme line, commanded great 
attention, and he became the democratic leader of the Senate m 
these views. In this fearless and patriotic course, he was ably 
sustained by Mr. Allen of Ohio, and other eminently ta'ented sons 
of the western, south-western and middle stales; and he had the 
honor to be out-voled on the ratification of the treaty, concluded 
on the 15th of June, 1846, between Mr. Packenham and Mr. Bu- 
chanan, which limits Oregon to 49 deg. north latitude. 

His policv on the Mexican war— on the monstrous assumptions 
of that ill-fated republic— its withholding of the indemnifies — its 
unjust and quixotic invasion of our territory north of the Rio Grande, 



44 



in the month of ^lay, 1S46 — in short, on her whole syslPtn of di- 
ploinacv and puhlic policy, he was equally hif;;h minded, bold and 
patriotic. To war with such a power in detail, and in a country so 
peciiliarlv favorable to guerrila efforts, was to put the advantage 
continually in her hands, and he therefore advocated the raising 
of our forces to the highest point, and the precipitating them upon 
the foe, with a full, combined and crushing force. In this the popu- 
lar will of the country concurred. The new regular regiments were 
not only filled, with unexampled rapidity, but volunteers ru^lied, 
in vast numbers, to the field, from all of the states, who vied with 
each other in the field, in deeds of bravery, endurance and heroism. 
A spark of patriotism had been touched by this war, which had 
slumbered from early days, and both the nations of America and 
Europe wondered at the consequences, without reflecting that the 
revenue, the tonnage, the means, and the population of the coun- 
try had increased within the last 30 years, n^arlv three-fold. All 
the materials of war — all that related to cither offensive operations 
in the field, or supplies in the camp — or to transportation by sea 
or land, were furnished with the readiness and promptitude of a 
merchant's order. Navies sailed, and armies fought, as navies and 
armies never fought before. Within four days of opening the siege, 
the strongest fortress in America — San Juan d'Ulloa — fell, and 
within four months from the first field c^jtiflict, Mexico submitted 
to the Americans. Peace followed, at no long date — a peace which 
secures a full indemnity for the war, in the cessions of the conter- 
minous provinces of New Mexico and Upper California. 

That the share which Gen. Cass had taken in these measures — 
his prominence in vindicating the views of the government in the 
Senate, as chairman of the mi'itary committee, and his bold and 
patriotic course at every exigency of debate, should refresh and 
renew the high opinions before entertained of his fitness for the 
highest gifi in the bestowal of the people, was a natural effect of 
events; and his nodiination at Baltimore, in the month of May 
last, by more than two-thirds of the entire number of delegates 
present from all the states, proves that the opinions which have 
been expressed, at various points, in the course of the preceding 
sketches, are not the solitary emanations of a single individual — 
not the partial testimony of a minority of voices, but the full, free, 
and sovereign acclamation of a vast majority of a whole people. 
That the selection so made, on full consideration, will be ratified 
hv the democracy of the land, at the ballot boxes of the ensuing 
November, cannot veil be doubled. Every day's events demon- 
strate the wisdom of that selection. Not onlv are there vital ques- 
tions in our internal policy, which a man like Gen. Cass is emi- 
nently fitted to meet and carry out ; but the entire world is under- 
going a moral and economical change which, under Providence, 
is preparing it for government reforms and improvements, which 
must encounter fierce opposition, and will call for high and un- 
swerving patriotism and energy in the American Executive. In 
every view which can be taken by the statesman, philanthropist, 



45 

and philosopher, the present is a irreat crisis, and the spirit of truth 
and hmiKiii improvement, rails upon the coiuitry to meet it with 
the deliberate foresight and ardent patriotism of a Wasliington and 
Jackson, a Franklin and Jefferson. 



< * « • > 



CHAPTER X. 

Tjaits of his private chararlcr — T%e ttiiblemished character of his private de- 
portment and domestic life — The tendcnqi of earhj education and predilec- 
tions to the practical, rather thttn speculative view of human life and society 
— His family — Character as an erplorer — Patronaf^t of scientific investiga- 
tions — .Mode of encountering penis, and ready resources i?i negotiations 
ivith the Indians, or under dangers or accidents — Megorij of a dream — His 
escapes on Lakes Erie and .Michigan, arid in the IVabash valley. 

It may appear, in closing;- these sketches, that some few words 
should be said respecting the private cbaracter of the distinguished 
individual whom we have been contemplating. To tbose who are 
not at all acquainted with him, this ma}' be deemed a pertinent 
curiosity; to those who personally know him, it cannot but be a 
very pleasing addition to what has already been said. To all his 
friends it will be a most gratifying conclusion; for, in the judg- 
ment of his severest enemies, it can expose no moral blemish, and 
reveal no domestic fault. His whole private life, from youth to 
age, displays one uniform course of unsullied private virtue and 
moral excellence of act and deportment. He is eminently a n)an 
of heart, and of deep and enlarged sensibilities. Educated in the 
moral axioms which had greeted the youthful studies of a Crom- 
well and a Hampden, as well as those of the later ages of a 
Franklin and Kochefaucault, his mind had, perhaps, an early ten- 
dency rather to admire the practical than the fanciful side of ihe 
picture of human life. An impassioned reader, there were few 
subjects of human knowledge which he had not made himself 
generally familiar with; and he sat down to this task with the ad- 
vantages of an early and ready knowledge of the classics, which 
he read in the original tongues. Transferred to the great area of 
the west, at an early day, his aspirations and his ambition, where 
these were pursued out of the line of his profession, were directed 
witii a singularly pertinacious consistency, to the useful, the prac- 
tical, and the utilitarian, in the actual advances of society. For 
we never observed, with very wide opportunities, that mere bril- 
liancy, stripped of utility, ever commanded from him more than a 
moment's attention. 

Gen. Cass married, early in life, a lady whose exalted virtues, 
decision of character, and cultivated understanding, united with 
devoted piety, has always commanded the highest esteem from 
all who intimately knew her. They had seven children, two of 



46 

whom died in infancy; his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, who to the 
advantages of a superior mind, agreeable person and pleasing, 
(iignifled manners, united a high course of intellectual training, 
died at the age of eighteen or twenty, lamented by all her ac- 
quainiancesand friends. The memory of the just is sweet. The 
benignity of her countenance imparted a marked interest to her 
conversation, to which she added wit, vivacity and intelligence. 

Gen. Cass gave a remarkable proof of the appreciating interest 
he took in tlie natural sciences, as connected with the topography 
of the west, in the expedition which he led through the great 
chain of the upper lakes to the sources of the Mississippi: and he 
ever, in the progress of that arduous expedition, which involved 
dangers and privations of the utmost kitid, permitted the several 
laborers in these departments of science to pursue their favorite 
objects in every practicable manner; and he sometimes contrived 
suitable pauses, in a necessarily hasty reconnoissance of several 
districts, to enable them to gather or investigate the essential facts. 
In this way, while the topography, native population and resources, 
in all their bearings, formed the ground-work of the daily obser- 
vations, the mineralog}^ and geology, the zoology and botany, and 
the fresh-water conchology, were brought under continual notice. 
it was his habit, when the expedition was delayed by winds on the 
shores of the open lakes, or entangled in the fastnesses of portages 
or other points of hindrance, to call up, or insensibly engage, the 
naturalists and savans of his party in verbal lectures or explanatory 
discussions on the various subjects committed to them, and in this 
manner the tedium of delay was forgotten. At one time the 
mineralogist demonstrated to him the difference between an inte- 
grant and an elementary particle, the Jan's of structure in crvstal- 
ization, or the relative ages of primitive and secondary %\va.\.7!i ; or 
the astronomer drew extemporaneous diagrams to demonstrate the 
orbits and evolutions of the planets. Every step of the journey 
was thus made a practical school of its ulterior objects. 

On one occasion Gen. Cass went himself about thirty miles 
from the shores of Lake Superior, to explore an important metallic 
district, through one of the most rugged and forbidding ranges of 
mountains and gorges, in which he was tinally separated and lost 
from the party, although he had an experienced Indian guide to diiect 
him. At another time the geologist was furnished with a canoe 
and men, to perform a journey of seventy miles, in order to in- 
vestigate the mineralogy of another district, while the whole ex- 
pedition paused. It may add interest to know, at twenty-eight 
years date, that one of those districts is now so widelv known as 
the theatre of the extensive ajpper mines of the north, and the 
other of the lead mines of Iowa and Wisconsin. 

In the personal risks and dangers growing out of his residence 
and travels on the frontier. Gen. Cass encountered his full share; 
nor is he known ever to have shi inked, or backed out, from the 
perils or hardships of the pressing hour. In emergencies, where 
the occasion required a lift or a pull, his hand and his shoulder 



47 

were not kept back. On one occasion, in 1S21, when he was 
going across the great prairie in lower Illinois, between Shawnee- 
town and the river Kaskaskia, the stage wagon stuck in the mire. 
There had been rains the day before, and the low grounds were 
saturated with water. There was no limber near; a ship at sea 
could not be more effectually out of the reach of succor. His 
travelling companions all got out, and were standing about the 
mud-pool well nigh in despair, when the voice of Gen. Cass (then 
Goveriior of jMichigan,) animated every one for a lift. He was 
actuallv, at this moment, in the deepest of the mud, with his 
shoulder nt one of the wheels. 

No perils are greater than those whicli overtake tlie canoe or 
boat traveller on our great lakes. These lakes are vast inter- 
nal seas. They are visited by tempests, tornadoes and fogs, more 
terrible and danfrerous than those of the Allantic. Often vessels 
of the heaviest tonnage are drawn from their moorings, and hurled 
ashore, or foundered in the deep. And the frail canoe of the 
Indian, if caught in one of these tempests, is driven like a ship 
before the waves, and hurried to destruction. One of their greatest 
dangers, however, arises from the suddenness of the phenomena 
which lash them into fury, bury them in mist, or distort their 
islands and shores, in the phantastic hues and proportions of 
mirage. They storm, sometimes, or are immersed in thick fogs, 
as if by enchantment, such is the instantaneous character of the 
meterological changes. One day, in 1825, during one of Gen. 
Cass's public excursions, a heavy, dense fog dropped down upon 
his birchen little craft, on the west shores of lake Michigan, at a 
moment of profound calm, and when there was not a cloud in 
sight. The men rowed wildly hither and yon; at length they 
threw up their paddles in despair. They were, in fact, on the 
broad and central surface of the lake, where eveti a moderate 
wind would have plunged all, in a moment, to the bottom. Such 
are the risks he frequently run. 

At another time (in 1821,) he sailed out of the mouth of Detroit 
river, into lake Erie, in the same species of craft, with a light, but 
fair wind, which carried his canoe rapidly, and induced the steers- 
man to hold wide into the lake. Imperceptibly the breeze strength- 
ened into a gale, and so fierce was the wind, that it was impossible 
to change the course of the canoe, without the certainty of its 
filling. He was thus driven 70 miles in a comparatively {g\\ 
hours. At length, the long rolliAg series of waves, each of which 
exceeded the other in altitude, combed over the top of the canoe, 
and came pouring in torrents down the General's breast, from his 
head and shoulders, completely filling the canoe, and immersing 
men and baggage in the water. It is he, only, who has once, 
twice, or thrice, escaped the j iws of death, at such imminent points, 
that can truly appreciate the mercy of the deliverance. 

It is an opinion often thrown out by shrewd old chiefs, who 
govern our red sons of the forest, that it is not love for them, or 
for the inherent principles of morality, that induces the govern- 



48 

ment of the United States to discourage the use and introduction 
of ardent spirits among them. General Cass determined to 
give a practical denial of this notion to them, at the great treaty 
of Prairie du Chien in 1S25, Nine of the most influential and. 
numerous tribes of Indians were assembled at that j)lace, to de- 
liberate on the boundaries between their respective countries, 
and thus to lay the foundation of a permanent peace, among each 
other. There was an immense gathering of Indians of all charac- 
ters, and in every shade of wild and picturesque costume. It was 
a suitable ocasion for such a denial, and it was made in a manner 
admirably suited to make an impression on the multitude. When 
the public business had been concluded, he directed all the tribes 
to assemble the next morning, under ihe wide bower where the 
councils were daily held. He then ordered tin vessels, or camp 
kettles, to be placed in a row along the green, covering its whole 
length, and filled to the brim with whiskey. He then addressed 
them on the pernicious influence of the use of strong liquors, on 
their families and themselves, pointing out, in strong and plain 
terms and figures, its inevitable effects in degrading and destroying 
them personally, and by tribes. Having fini^hed his appeal, while 
all eyes were turned to him, he ordered the men, who stood by the 
kettles, simultaneously to upset them, and jpill the liquor on the 
ground. A hundred lectures or sermons could not have been as 
impressive upon the vast, attentive, and almost disbelieving In- 
dians, when they saw their loved poison flowing over the green. 

In the numerous councils held by Gen. Cass with the Indians, 
it was sometimes necessary to adopt the Indian mode of reasot)ing, 
to effect an object. This was eflectually resorted to, at a council 
with the Winnebagoes and Sacs and Foxes, at Green Bay, in 
1S2S, which was held for the purchase of the lead mine country 
in northern Illinois and Wisconsin. The chiefs played ofT, diplo- 
matically, many days, and evaded the point in their replies. One 
day Gen. Cass told them his mind, on the proposal of the United 
States to purchase the mineral country, under the allegory of a 
dream : 

" Spotted Arm,"* said he, "was about to tell us his dream. I 
will tell him mine. I dreamed I w-as going along by the Prairie, t 
and I saw a great many shining things on the ground. I did not 
know what they were. As I travelled along, I came to the foot of 
a hill, where I met a red man on a fine horse. I asked him where 
he came from. He said he came from the Great Spirit. I was 
glad to hear it, for I was lost, and he would put me right. I asked 
him what country that was. He said it belonged to the red man. 
I told him I wondered, for I saw no game; he said the red man 
had killed it all. I asked what that shining stuff was, that I saw. 
He said it was what the while people called lead. I asked him if 
that was made for the red people. He said no. I asked him what 
the Great Spirit did make for the red men. He said game, corn 
and wild rice, but this he made for the white people. I asked him 
• A Winnebago Chief. t Prairie du Chien 



49 

what he put that stufTon the land of the red man for. He said it 
was put there that when the red men liad lulled all the game, 
they nii^ht sell the land to the whites and buy themselves clothes, 
and whatever else they wanted. I said that I was very glad that 
he told nie, for I would tell my red children the first time I saw 
them. This is my dream. You see by this, that the Great Spirit 
did not make the land for you, but for us, and you must ask a good 
price for it." 

One night on the sources of the Wabash, he had taken shelter 
in a rude log cabin at the Raccoon's village. This was a Miami 
village, and he had no sooner got well ])laced on a pallet, than the 
whole band outside the cabin, who had obtained licjuor, began a 
noisy brawl, whooping and howling like so many wild demons. 
In the midst of this horrible outcry, an old Indian woman appeared 
as an angel of deliverance. Having got away the knives and 
lances of the men, who were bewildered and enraged with drink, 
she came stealthily into the cabin, feeling her way in the darkness, 
and hid them in the cracks and crevices of the logs. The feeling 
of intense anxiety, with which this novel scene was witnessed, can 
never be forgotten. 

At the treaty of Buttes des Morts in 1827, a young Indian stabbed 
his mother-in-law in several places directly in front of Gen. Cass's 
temporary log hut. Her shrieks instantly hurried him, together 
with his "attendants, to the spot, two of whom, urged by this cry of 
humanity and forgetting all personal danger, seized two young In- 
dians by their hair, who were near the body of the bleeding wo- 
man, and hurled them to the ground, keeping them tightly clenched 
there, althoufifh they inflicted no blows on them. Gen. Cass di- 
rected that both the prostrate Indians should be disarmed and li- 
berated, and the next day he assembled all the Indians around a 
mound, to the top of which the assassin was taken by the inter- 
preters, and having been completely disrobed, including his head 
feathers, baldric and breech cloth, the latter being deemed the 
very to'^a virihs of the Indians, he was publicly invested with a 
madiicota, or petticoat, and thus overwhelmingly degraded, allowed 
to seek, in shame and mortification, his lodge, amidst the shouts, 
whoops and jeers of the whole multitude. 

This punishment was the more appropriate as the woman was 
not killed, having warded off the blows from her breast by placing 
her arms quickly across it, each of which was most frightfully cut 

to the bone. 

Sometimes hostile Indians, or bands of faithless plunderers athirst 
for drink or blood, came stealthily on his camp, at midnight, with 
the steps of a creeping panther. Near Winemac, on the Wabash, a 
party of roving Pottowatomies approached his tent, in this manner, 
in the summe'r of 18:21. Their object could not', be told. It ap- 
peared to be drink. They came in a file, at night, which was dis- 
covered, in a faint moon-light, through an opening of the tent, 
which had been thus arranged for the benefit of air. Before they 
4 



50 



had reached the tent, Gen. Cass had arisen, and calling- out to his 
aid, " Robert I Robert I" he was prepared with entire calmness, to 
receive them. He then addressed them in a tone and manner that 
rose above the ordinary point, and impressed and arrested them. 
But the next morning, at an early hour, having way laid his party 
on the river at a fordable rapid, they attacked and plundered the 
advanced canoe, and retired with their booty. Gen. Cass was at 
this moment one or two miles in the rear, descending the river 
under an easy forcejof paddles, and without knowled(:e of the treach- 
ery. A man not accustomed to the varying phases of the Indian 
character, would have roused the country, and brought the govern- 
ment into an Indian war, or at least made an immediate report of 
the outrage to Washingion, calling for aid. He did neither, view- 
ing it as the act of lawless stragglers, who would not be sustained 
by their tril)e, but were rather to be pitied. And he judged rightly, 
for the same year he concluded a treaty with that very tribe, the 
Pottowattomies, for the purchase of the Chica^:© country. 

It was not always, however, that the Indians could be thus 
peaceably restrained, in tlieir ficUle and wayward policy. An in- 
stance of this kind has been mentioned, in its connection with a 
prior part of these reminiscences, where he deemed the occasion 
fit to put down promptly an indignity, at the risk of his life. 
[Vide incident of pulling down the British flag at Saint ]\Iary's.] 
On another occasion, which has also been noticed, [vide treaty of 
Buttes des Morts,] it became necessary hastily to gather a military 
force, and to throw it suddenly on the scene of disturbance, in or- 
der to crush, if need be, the threatened outbreak at a blow. Few 
men have ever been better calculated to judge of the mode of pro- 
cedure, and the measuie of resistance necessary to meet these 
changes in our Indian alfairs, at the moment, than General Cass, 
and no one can be mentioned, in Western local history, who has 
been more uniformly and preeminently successful. He knew 
when force and when mildness was proper — when argument and 
persuasion were adequate alone to reach the object, and the pre- 
cise effect that procrastination or promptitude would have on th« 
Indian mind, both in leading it to just considerations or awakening 
it to action. And he appeared always to have an intuitive sense 
of those junctures, in this very complicated species of diplomacy, 
when a resort to harsher measures was reiiuired to overawe and 
curb their furious passions and prejudices. His great foresight in 
these respects, and his marked tact of adininisiration, kept the 
frontiers in a state of peace for eighteen years, being the entire 
length of his government at Detroit, during which he a.^quired 
from these tribes, on fair negotiation and at good prices to them, a 
large part of the new territory over which four or five of the new 
states now spread their population. 



51 



CHAPTER XL 

The same vigor, decision, mid originnlilti of thought, which marked his public 
acts, appear in his private anl literan/ chararter — His views on the theory 
of the slrurturc of the In. Han languages — The general tone and character 
of his literari/ writings — . Ipliorisnts — Clear and sound views of our repub- 
lican si/s!c!n — //(■ visits the .Vi!e, Palestine, Greece, and the Islands of tlu 
.Mediterranean, and makes a collection of coins and antiquities — Examines 
the (jueslion of the studi/ of Kgi/ptian heirogli/phics at Paris, and the true 
state of the ancient Mexican civUization, in connection with their picloridU 
system of writing — Private opinions — Love of country. 

Gen. Cass did not alluw the phenomena of the Indian tribes, 
and tlieir curious manners and customs, to pass before him for so 
m;uiv years, without having his attention excited by the imper- 
fectly known atid problematical character of their liislory and lan- 
guages. During the limited time that he devoted his leisure 
hours to these inquiries, h*' pursued them with great zeal, and en- 
gaged his friends on the frontiers in collecting materials to aid hitn 
in the studv of the subject. It is to be regretted that these collec- 
tions, and the general results of his inquiries, have been withheld 
fiom the public. The papers and revit-ws which have found their 
wav to the press, on this topic, from his pen, evince great vigor, 
clearness of conception and originality, conveyed in an eloquent 
and glowing stvie which, at the time, arrested much attention. To 
philologists, his views came with deep interest, from his great 
means uf original observation, the marked facility of his style, and 
the bold vein of critical acumen wiili which he examined some of 
the Gframmatical and ethnological positions of those who had pre- 
ceded him in the discussion. There is a marked character in his 
literary productions. Few writers, in the compass of English lite- 
rature, since the davs of Dean Swift, appear so habitually to have 
been gifted with the power of putting •' proper words in proper 
places." While he writes con amore, and at all times with a Iree 
and bold pen, he evinces a fitness and power in ilie collocation of 
words, which falls on the ear with a melodious and captivating 
force. He has that power at the desk, which eloquent men have 
in the forum or the pulpit. This would l>e a comparatively useless 
gift, were it confined to the mere use of glowing and appropriate 
lanorijanre. The clearness and strength and justness of the thouirlits, 
and the power of investigation displayed, constitute after all, their 
most striking characteristic. Hi-nce, it was, undoubtedly, that his 
literarv and controversial papers commanded so much notice in 
their dav, lor it is now many years since he has dropped the sub- 
ject, which has, probably, passed measurably out of mind. 

It is refreshing, however, at any period, to have the current of 
old theories examined and stirred up, by new and vigorous thought; 
and it is in this respect that Gen. Cass has conferred a service to 
the cause of American philology. The circumstance of the early 



52 

settlement of his father's family in the near vicinity of the Mora- 
vian n)i;<sion of Gradenhinten, in the valley of the Muskingum, 
broiiijht him into an early acquaintance wilh the Kev. John Hecke- 
welder, who, abont 1819, communicated his views of ihe Delaware 
language, and his general ideas of the Indians, and their hisiory 
and languages, to tlie American Philosophical Society at Phila- 
delphia. The meagre state of Mr. Heckewelder's acquirement.*, 
his absolute ignorance of philology, and the implicit reliance which 
his good and unsuspecting nature h-d him to place on the Dela- 
ware traditions and stories, were well understood on the .\iuskin- 
gum. New as ihe country was at that time, and unknown to lite- 
rary fame, there were men of classical education, enlarged reading 
and bright minds there, who were in the habit of canvassing sub- 
jects with a spirit of freedom and originality, which are yet mental 
characteristics in the toil-compacted and tried intellects of the hardy 
sons of the west. 

When these lucubrations and reminiscences of Mr. Heckewelder 
were published, under the auspices of the Philosophical Society, 
by Mr. Duponceau, Gen. Cass perceived that they had undergone 
the refining and polishing process of that gentleman's ripe and 
scholarlv tnind. They had, indeed, been entirely rewritten, and 
formed the basis of the 'polysyiithetic theory — a theory of the In- 
dian syntax, founded on an enlarged and philosophic conception of 
the structure of these languages; but which, so far as Mr. Hecke- 
welder's preconceptions went, exhibited an utter ignorance of the 
philology of the Shemitic group of languages, and the general 
principles of the ancient tongues. In what have been called the 
personal forms, ]\Ir. Heckewelder contended, in his examples, for 
an ultra-recondite power of discrimination in the use of the two 
classes of the fiefixed and si/JJixcd jironouns, and an almost 2m- 
limited, and at the same time undiifined power of lexicography. 
Gen. Cass attacked this feature, deeming the language fitted only 
to the limited, plain wants and objects of the people. In a very 
elaborate examination of Mr. Heckewelder's writings, in the North 
American Quarterly for April, 1828, he exposed the true character 
of the trustful but inexact missionary's translations of both the 
Delaware and Wyandot, which he demonstrated to be often vague, 
imprease or wrong. In this examination, Gen. Cass had the ad- 
vaniao-e of the most able interpreters of the United States Indian 
Department, in the Delaware and Wyandot languages. The late 
eminent philologist, Mr. Pickering, replied, not in the best temper, 
perhaps, in defence of Mr. Heckewelder's writings, as exhibited 
by Mr. Duponceau. Mr. Rawie did the same in i\Ir. Walsh's 
American Quarterly Review. Mr. Gallatin, who was the intimate 
friend of Mr. Duponceau, but who was not deceived respecting Mr. 
Heckewelder's erudition or acquirements, laid by, with his usual 
caution and diplomatic tact, and did not show the bent of his mind 
on this subject, till the appearance of his " Synopsis of the Indian 
Tribes," in 1836,* in which he endorses the old Delaware tradi- 
•Archaelogia Americana. 



53 

tion of supremacy, by an attempt to render poetic justice to the 
Lenapees, in a new clasbifioation of the AljLfonquin family ; casting, 
however, the weight of his opinion against the historic episode of 
the symbolic use of the Heckeweldcrian •' petticoat," a very weak 
point in the Delaware traditions. This tendency to side with tlie 
Moravian's views, was seen more plainly in his paper on the semi- 
civilized tribes of Mexico, in the first volume of the American 
Ethnological Transactions, in 184-5, in which lie carefully omits, 
at page 31, in a professed enumeration of American philological 
writers, the names of all who have embraced the simplest and 
most common-sense views of the syntax and powers of the Indian 
languages. And this is done with a diplomatic salvo which no- 
body but a philologist will understand, although one of the writers 
of the Cass school, thus excluded by him, had furnished a series 
of dissertations, under the form of lectures, of wliich his friend Mr. 
Duponceau, in a letter of Nov. lOih, 1834, to Dr. E. James, says : 
"1 must own that his descriptions of the composition of words in 
tlie Chippeway language is the most elegant that I have yet seen. 
He is an able and elegant writer; he treats his subject philo- 
sophically. " To give point to this studied omission of the eminent 
Genevese etymologist, it may be added that it was on a translation 
of those very lectures into the French language, as a basis, that 
Mr. Duponceau received the prize of the French Institute for the 
best essav on the American lanfj-uages, awarded the next year. A 
single observation of Gen. Cass, on the languages, is added : " The 
grammarians who have treated of our Indian languages, have fallen 
into an error, loo common in all philosophical invesiiirations. of 
forming their principles upon preexisting models, and of trans- 
ferring to these tongues rules of syntax derived from arid applica- 
ble to different ' plans of ideas.'* 

This view is sufficient to denote the general tenor and original- 
ity of Gen. Cass's impressions on the American languages, w hich 
he did not think had been adeqiiaielv handled. Nor did he believe 
justice had been done to the clearlv admitted powers of the 
languages, or to the Americans who had investigated them. It 
was, indeed, the tendency of foreign writers at home and abroad 
on western philology, to underrate American mind, on this topic, 
that appears to have lent impulse to his researches. Indeed, 
ethnographically viewed, Gen. Cass has shown such utter mistakes 
and duplications in the writings of these men, on the names, lo- 
calities, and synonyms of the American tribes, as must demand of 
all the readers of Adelung, Vater, and Prichard, hereafter, the 
most careful scrutinv to avoid error. 

But it was not alone in relation to this topic of American litera- 
ture, that the pen of Gen. Cass expressed ability, or scrutinized 
pretence. He first drew attention, as a graphic and gifted writer, 
by some descriptions of northern scenery, w-hich he had viewed in 
his expedition in 15:20, particularly by his glowing account of the 

• North American Review, April, 1828. 



54 

Pictured Rocks on Lake Superior.* In lS2o, he unmasked, as we 
have sliown in a prior chnpier, the literary forgeries of John Dunn 
Hunter, with a power of investigation that proves the existence of 
early forensic habits; and we can only regret the easy pandering 
to titled names in England, which should have led our countryman 
Catlin, in his recent slip-shod itinerary volume of " Eight years 
residence in Europe," to idealize testimony in favor of an im- 
p(3ster. who knew as little in reality of the languages, history, or 
real iraits of the American Indians, jis Catlin iiiinself. The 
general posture of the American press to bow to European dictates, 
found little favor at his hands. He essayed to lend his in- 
fluence to stimulate and organize an American literature, founded 
on American niateri.-ils, submitted to the excogitation and digestion 
of American thought. His address and discourses before various 
literarv societies all look this way, and abound in felicities of ex- 
pression and sound philosophical views of literature, learning and 
science. There is, botli in these more elaborate productions, as 
well as in his public speeches and addresses, and his occasional 
published papers and letters, a tone of enlarged nationality, and a 
high appreciating capacity of moral excellence, and the true 
elements of history and character, which impart to them an eminent 
rank. Many of his aphorisms, thrown out in various ways, are 
expressed with force and piquancy. A few may be added here. 

" In the progress of human life, the present only is fell, the past 
is recollected, and the future anticipated." 

"History is not the pnnegyric of human actions. It is our 
destiny to meet good and evil, in the chequered scenes of life ; and 
it is our duly to draw lessons from the vices, as well as the virtues 
of our nature." 

"Time, labor and attention, constitute the first, and the second, 
and the third requsite for a candidate for literary fame." 

" Lessons of liberty may be slowly learned, but they are surely 
learned." 

"Wan cannot fathom the designs of Providence, but experience 
teaches us, that great political changes are among the means em- 
ployed in the moral government of the V-orld ; and that they often 
come to renovate decrepid nations, and to give new vigor to the 
human faculties." 

"It is better to defend the first than the last inch of territory." 

"Liberty must often be purchased with sacrifices, but when 
once e^^tablished, it is worth all it costs." 

" The nation which will not defend its rights and honors, will 
soon have neither rights nor honors to defend." 

"Human liberty, human equality, and human improvements, 
moral and physical, should be the object of our desires, as well as 
of our efl'orts." 

" Revolutions are made here by the ballot box, but in Europe by 
the cartridge box." 

• Vide notes to Ontwa ; a poem by II. Wliiling, 1821. 



55 

" Governments have found it easy to put an end to the trans- 
gressions of oflenders, hy puitinsr an end to their lives; but the 
opinion gains ground, throughout the civilized world, that human 
life has been loo often sacrificed to unjust laws, which seek the 
death of the offender, rather than his reformation." 

" 1 have no fears that an extension of territory will weaken our 
government, or put in pi ril our institutions " 

" We might as well attempt to stay the waves of the Pacific, as 
to stay the tide of emigration, which is setting towards its shores." 

"To the people of this country, under God, now and hereafter, 
are its destinies committed, and we want no foreign power to in- 
terrogate us, treaty in hand, and say — Why have you done this? 
Or, whv have you left that undone? Our own dignity and the 
principles of national independence, unite to repel such a propo- 
sition." 

" Of all questions that can agitate u?, those which are merely sec- 
tional in their character, are the most dangerous, and the most to 
be deprecated." 

One of the first objects, which engrossed the leisure of Gen. 
Cass, at Paris, after his securing to the U. S. government interest 
on the treaty indemnities, was a visit to the time honored shores 
of the ^Mediterranean. He ascended the Nile and visited and ex- 
amined its ancient monuments and their inscriptions. He vi.-ittd the 
Holy Land, in all its length, treading the shores of the Red sea, stand- 
ing on the lop of Mount Carmel, and viewing the sacred precincts of 
Jerusalem. Ancient Greece, and Asia Minor, in their general 
outlines and features, were presented to his eye. He visited ihe 
sites and ruins of its towns with the anxiety of a studeiit of its 
history, poetry and philosophy. And he searched out and stood 
upon its ancient battle fields, with the pride of an antiquary, re- 
joicing, at the same time, that the liberty, for which she had so 
often fought, had found a sure and solid resting place in the com- 
paratively magnificent domains of the far-spreading, and fast pop- 
ulating west. " Our own internal seas," he observes, standing on 
the ancient island of Crete, the cradle of Grecian mythology and 
naive land of Jupiter, V^esta, Ceres, Juno, Neptune, and Pluto, — 
" present masses of water as large, and some of them larger than 
this ' jEgean deep,' and abound with picturesque objects, almost 
unrivalled in the world. The entrance into Lake Superior, with 
the shores embosomed in woods, the high lands gradually opening 
and receding on each side, and the water as clear as crystal, ex- 
tendin!; beyond the reach of the eye, forms one of the most strik- 
ing displays of natural beauties, it has ever fallen to our lot to 
witness."* 

The ancient labyrinth, at the foot of Mount Ida, he compared 
with the Mammoth Cave of Kentucky, and comes to the conclusion, 
that the former like the latter, is originally due to geological causes, 
and that the Grecian cavern has but been eked out by the labored 

• The Island of Candia. Saulhern Literary Messenger, 1S39. 



56 

industry of man. " We are persuaded," he adds, " that this is the 
natural solution of all the niyster\' nttending this subject. As to 
the story of the labyrinth, and the thousand fables connected with 
it, they do not merit a moment's serious consideration, except so 
far as they furnish materials for an interesting chapter in the his- 
tory of human nature; evincing, on the one hand, the fertility of 
the imagination, and on the other, the extent to which credulity 
may be carried, either in an implicit belief in a monstrous fable, 
or in a more chastened faith, seeking the materials in bygone 
events, and gravely endeavoring to account for the violations, not 
only of probability, but of possibility, by combining some allego- 
rical mystery with traditionary fact."* 

In these visits and researches, amidst the ancient monuments of 
mankind, he made a large collection of medals, coins and curiosi- 
ties of art, whijh he ordered home, and distributed with a liberal 
hand, to his friends, and to public institutions.! A part of his 
leisure in Paris, where he was surrounded with every facility of 
reference, was devoted to the study of these monuments. He ex- 
amined also the subject of the true condition of the aiicient Mexi- 
cans, and their progress in civilization ; and the history and present 
state of the system of Egyptian hieroglyphics. These studies, of 
which the first results were communicated to a leading periodical 
in 1S40, brought him to the conclusion that a strong predi>position 
had existed in the minds of learned investigators of Europe to 
magnify the importance of the actual results of these studies to 
history and letters. " It is my decided impression," he writes to a 
friend, Oct. 7, 1840, "that the article (alluding to a piece of 
American antiquity sent to him from America,) however i; n)ay 
differ from the ordinarv instruments of its class, is still of Indian 
manufacture, and owes nothing to Grecian or Roman forms. I 
have had occasion, during this season, to look somewhat into the 
matter, having commenced the preparation for an article on the 
subject of our Indian antiquities, and also all that is known re- 
specting the ancient Mexican works. During, however, the pro- 
gress of my investigations, I found the subject so to increase under 
my hands, that it swelled to quite a book. But besides the topics 
indicated, I have examined two oiher subjects having, or rather 
supposed to have, some relation to them. These are, the true 
condition of the ancient Mexicans as to their progress in civiliza- 
tion, and the history and present state of Egyptian hieroglyphics. 
I cannot eo into the matter here, but you will find that 1 do not 
consider the pictorial representations of the Mexicans, nor the rude 
sketches of our Indians, as entitled to the epithet of writing. "t , 

Of our Western antiquities he says: " Their existence is a won- 
der, to which there is nothing comparable in our country. To 

•Candia. 

tMany of ihesp collections were shamefully retained, and bestowed away 
in this: country by the late Commodore J. D. Elliot. 

JNobis. 



57 

account for their original erection, we are driven to conjecture 
eitlier tliat another race of men, superior in every social and intel- 
lectual quality to our present race of Indians, once inhabited these 
regions, and were wholly extirpated, or expelled, or that the de- 
scendants of this people have forgotten the most useful arts of life, 
and have lost all remembrance of their own origin, with all the 
traditions of their ancestors."* 

Of the Mississippi valley, he remarks: " The man yet lives, 
who was living when almost the first tree fell before the wood- 
man's stroke, in this great domain ; and the man is now living, who 
will live to see it contain one hundred millions."! 

Of geology : " The collection of the materials, must precede the 
construction of the edifice. Theories, founded on gratuitous as- 
sumptions, or facts errroneously or falsely reported, cannot stand 
the test of time and investigation. In those sciences which depend 
upon a knowledge of facts, and of the operations of nature, patient 
research and observation are our first duties. Crude and hasty 
theories, present formidable obstacles to the march of science, by 
distracting the attention of observers, and by producing and cher- 
ishing a disposition to bend the facts to the theory." 

Of the Indian character: '* Our only monuments are the primi- 
tive people around us. Broken and fallen as they are, they yet 
survive in ruins, connecting the present with the past, and exciting 
emotions like those which are felt iu the contemplation of other 
testimonials of human instability." 

Of ethnological researches respecting them, he says : " Of the 
moral character and feelings of the Indians; of their mental disci- 
pline; of tlieir peculiar opinions, mythological and religious; and 
of all that is most valuable to man in the history of man, we are 
about as ignorant, as when Jacques Cartier first ascended the St. 
Lawrence. "t 

In his " Three Hours at St. Cloud," a paper written at Paris, 
occurs the following description of the scene presented by the con- 
fluence of the Missouri with the Mississippi. It may be presented 
as a specimen of his ready and exact descriptive powers, though 
taken at hap-hazard, from the nearest source at hand. The time 
is right ; darkness has overspread the heavens, and the writer has 
ventured his life in a frail bark canoe, which is urged at full speed 
to save the upper country from the Indian's scalping knife. It was 
durinir his great eflxirt to suppress the Winnebago outbreak of lS:i7. 

"Under ordinary circumstances," he writes, "I should have sought 
the fircjt good place of encampment which presented itself toward 
the decline of day, and landing, should have taken from the water 
mv canoe and luggage, and pitching my tent and lighting a good 
fire, should have disposed myself for a comfortable supper and a 
quiet night. But I was obliged to forego these lux jries of western 
travelling, and the night had already commenced, when I passed 

•Historical Discourse. 
tYucalan. $A. D. 1534. 



58 

the mouth of the Illinois, and was advanced, when the gfradiial 
relaxation oi" the current warned us that we were approaching the 
point of junction of those great arteries of the continent, wiiere the 
Missouri precipitates itself with the force of its tremendous stream, 
into the Mississippi, and sending its current almost lo the opposite 
bank, checks, for manv miles, the power of its rival ; a rival, which 
usurps its name, but whose changed characteristics from here to 
the sea, sufficiently indicate its inferiority. The peculiar features 
of these great rivers, having their sources in regions so distant, and 
mingling in a common mass, to pour their joint floods into the 
ocean, present one of the most interesting subjects for considera- 
tion, which the study of American geology offers to the inquirer. 

" The current of the Missouri is prodigious ; boiling, whirling, 
eddying, as though confined within too narrow a space, and striving 
to escape from it. It is perpetually undermining its banks, which 
are thrown into the stream, almost with the noise of an avalanche, 
and its water is exceedingly turbid, mixed with the earth of which 
it takes possession, and exhibiting a whitish clayey appearance, so 
dense and impenetrable to the light, that it is impossible to dis- 
cern an object below the surface of the river. The Mississippi, on 
the contrary, is a quiet, placid stream, with a gentle current, and 
transparent water, where the traveller leaves /ew traces of its 
ravages behind him, and apprehends no danger before him. We 
had no moon, but the stars slione brightly, and danced in the clear 
water of the river, revealing the dark foliage of the forests, which 
seemed like walls to enclose us as we swept along, but still open- 
ing a passage to us as we advanced. Our Canadians had been 
merry, sending their songs along the water, breaking the stillness 
of the night, alternately by the clear voice of their alternate singer, 
and then by the loud chorus in which each joined with equal 
alacrity and strength of lungs. But as the night closed around us, 
their gaiety disappeared, and the song and the chorus gradually 
died away, leaving us, in the silence of the flood and forest, which 
seemed to be our world ; alive only with the little band whose 
destiny was committed to as frail a bark as ever tempted danger. 

" There seemed to be something sacred in the place and the 
circumstances. There was indeed no holy ground, nor was there 
a burning bush, nor warning voice to proclaim the duty of adora- 
tion. But we all felt that we had reached one of those impressive 
spots in the creation of God, which speak his power in living 
characters; and we had reached it, covered by the shadows of 
night, whose obscurity, while it shrouded the minuter features of 
the scene, could not conceal its great outlines, though it added to 
the deep and breathless emotions with which we gazed around us, 
seekinLT to penetrate the narrow, gloomy barrier that shut us in. 
We felt the very moment when we touched the waters of the Mis- 
souri. We heard the boiling of its mighty stream around us. 
We were launched upon our course almost like a race horse in the 
lists. Our light canoe was whirled about by the boiling flood, and 
the thick muddy water sent us back no friendly stars to guide and 



59 

enliven ii?. The sliVlitcst obstacle we mifrht have encountered — 
a tree projecting from the bank— a ' sawyer' emerging from below, 
or a floating log would have torn ofl' the fragile material which 
•was alone between us and the stream, and left not one of us to tell 
the story of our fate." 

Such were the imminent risks at which his public administra- 
tive duties were often performed. But he did not allow the re- 
membrance of a noble scene to pass away with its dangers. The 
Ganges or the Nile could not excite in the breast of their votaries 
a higher interest than he seems to have manifested for the Mis- 
souri, which in 1821 he drove a long day's journey, from St. Louis 
to the St. Charles, in the hot sun of July to behold, and there 
taking a drink of its waters, drove back again without any other 
object to call him to this pilgrimage. And to whatever foreign 
country he went, still, like the sweet poet of nature and simplicity, 
he might well exclaim, in relation to his native land: 

" Where'er I roam, whatever realms to view, 
My heart uniravelled fondly turns to you." 

A single further specimen of his descriptive talent, united with 
the power of associating the past with the present, is taken fronri 
his address in 1843, at the opening of the Wabash and !Miami 
canal, by which a connection is formed between the Ohio and the 
Lakes. 

"1 have stood upon the plain of Marathon, the battle-field of 
liberty. It is silent and desolate. ISei.her Greek nor Persian is 
there to give life and animation to the scene. It is bounded by 
sterile hills on one side, and lashed by the eternal waves of the 
jEgean sea on the other. But Greek and Persian were once there, 
and that decayed spot was alive with hostile armies, who fought 
the great fight which rescued Gri-ece frein the yoke of Persia. 
And I have stood upon the hill of Zion, the city of Jerusalem, the 
scene of our Redeemer's sufferings and crucifixion and ascension. 
But the sceptre has departed from Judah. and its glory from the 
capital of Solomon. The Assyrian, the Egyptian, the Greek, the 
Roman, the Arab, the Turk, and the Crusader, have passed over 
thi- chief place of Israel and have reft it of its power and beauty. 
In those regions of the East where society passed its infancy, it 
seems to have reached decrepitude. If the associations which the 
memory of their past glory excites are powerful, they are melan- 
choly. They are without gratification for the present, and with- 
out hope for the future. But here we ar^ in the freshness of youth, 
and can look forward with rational confidence to ages of progress irj 
all that gives power and pride to man, and dignity to human na- 
ture. It is better to look forward to prosperity than back to glory." 



60 



CHAPTER XII 

The. benevolence of his character — General summarjf of his life, as it appears 
in his leading public and private acts — His position in the Senate, during 
its recent arduous sessions and proceedings on the Oregon question and 
Mexican tvar — Views of the constitution — High toned Americanism. 

We have omitted speaking of the strong benevolent trait in the 
^ character of Gen. Cass, which led him to employ all the means in 
his power for the recovery for the Indians, and restoration to their 
friends, of captives taken from families on our frontiers in the In- 
dian war. But it would transcend our design, to extend these 
remnrks so as to include the numerous individual instances, ia 
which he zealously and successfully entered into this field of hu- 
manity. There was r)o appeal, in the whole course of his civil 
administration, which found a more quick and ready response in his 
breast. He was alive to every pulsation which bound the heart of 
a parent, a brother or a sister, to this peculiarly afflictive cla,-^s of 
suffering humanity. A child torn from its mother's arms, by a 
relentless savage — a youth urged on, over steep and morass to es- 
cape the pursuit of the marauding party, or an adult male or 
female consigned to hopeless, hapless captivity, among a people 
whose very manners and institutions ofTer daily scenes to sicken 
the human heart — what appeal can come with a deeper and stronger 
claim to a sensitive mind. Gen. Cass was peculiarl}' open to such, 
appeals. He never neglected a letter on this topic, however im- 
probable or old the investigation, or however ill written, or, half 
illegible the letter that called upon him. And he never ceased to 
push the inquiry, till success crowned the effort, or utter failure, in 
tracing the lost captive, sealed the attempt. It is enough to say, 
this labor of benevolence gave him a full and sweet reward. 

In the language o[ the Hon. Mr, Allen of Ohio: 

"Many are the still surviving first settlers of the west, whose 
lives were saved from the fury of the Indians by the prompt inter- 
position and firm yet persuasive authority of Gen. Cass. 

"Many are the men, then children, but who now, in maturity, 
enjoy the happiness of extending to their aged parents, the sweet 
solace of filial afTtcti.n, and who owe this liappiness alone to that 
vigilant genius wh'.ch so securely guarded their otherwise defence- 
less infancy. Many also were the acts of justice, of humanity, 
and benevolence, by which Gen. Cass sought to assuage the- suf- 
ferings and sorrows of the unfortunate savages, who until he went 
among them, knew no law but that of revenge, nor felt any other 
restraint in massacre than the want of a victim."* 

• Vide iotroductory remarks to " AdministratioQ of Gen. Cass in the North- 
west." 



61 

Sufficient, it is believed, is before the candid reader, to enable 
him to judge of the truthfulness ot the positions, \viil\ wliich these 
remarks were comrnenceil. We have been contemplating the life, 
acts and opinions of no ordinary man — a man gifted by no com- 
mon powers of mind, improved by no common degree of studv, 
experience, reflection and cultivation, in every sense, he stands 
out prominently, as one whose intellectual energies have made 
him the architect of his own fortunes, from youth to age. As a 
student, an advocate and soldier, a legislator, a military com- 
mander, a civil governor, a member of the cabinet, a diplomatist, 
at home and abroad, and a senator in Congress, he has evinced, 
in each position, superior powers of mind, and risen, at every step, 
with tlie occasion which called for their exercise. There is a 
chain, in all this, which cannot be deemed the wild weavings of 
chance or accident, or the successful efforts of party favoritism, or 
political finesse. No man has been, indeed, more above this. 
Without wealth, in the outset, or the impetus of wealthy friends, 
he has risen to notice by his own unaided energy of character. 
He did not deem his chance of success better than any other young 
man of his time. Least of all did he, in his youth, dream of what 
his manhood has fulfilled. With a staff in his hand and a dollar 
in his pocket, he crossed the Alleghany mountains, the year that 
WashincTton died. He is now a candidate for the hii^h seat of 
power, once filled by that heaven-guided patriot. He went down 
into the valley of the Ohio, like David into the bed of the evapo- 
rated stream, which furnished a (e\v smooth pebbles as his only 
armour against the rage of a giant. Like him, he picked up his 
pebbles, where chance directed his eye and his fool. But there 
appears in one, as in the other, a higher purpose in all this. We 
cannot tell that other youth, with equal energy and decision of 
character, and with equal diligence and virtue, will reach so high 
a goal ; but this we may infer, that without these qualities, he could 
never have stood out, in the bold relief, which he evinces this day, 
and that all who neglect the means, in whatever sphere they act, 
will miss the end. 

A man of the people, he has been noticed by and risen with the 
people. Born in the extreme East, it was his fortune to become 
identified at an early age, with the extreme West. A pioneer in 
J799, he has been sustained by the sons of the pioneers. A sharer 
in the early dangers and perils of the frontiers, he became an effi- 
cient defender of those frontiers. Wherever he was placed, he 
improved the means at his command, and he always appeared to 
do best that which he was doing. 

To adopt the language of Mr. Rush, the present American 
minister in Paris: "The son of a revolutionary soldier, who fought 
in most of the hard battles of the war, he has a claim, by his stock, 
to patriotic and courageous blood. Having gone along, almost 
step by step, with that immense portion of his country beyond the 
Alleghanies, which, since he came into life, has grown into an 



62 

empire of civilization, by itself, it is only since his return from an 
important mission, that the book of his life has been well opened 
to his countrymen at large, and none who examine it can fail to 
perceive how full of national service it is, both solid and brilliant, 
and always attesting a high capacity for affairs. 

"It is not a littleremarkablc, that Gen. Cass should have com- 
menced his public life by being instrumental in crushing a con- 
spiracy against his country in one hemisphere, and have terminated 
it, so far, by defeating one in the other. On first enteiing the 
Ohio legislature, where he was a disciple of Mr. Jefferson, he took 
a leading part in measures for arresting Burr's conspiracy; and 
lately, in France, he was the great moving cause of putting down 
a conspiracy or confederacy, whichever name may be preferred, 
of European potentates against the rights, interests and sovereignty 
of his country upon the ocean. Always of the democratic party; 
always of unblemished integrity; always true to his duty, whal- 
everits nature or magnitude, or wherever its locality, whether on 
the Wisconsin in his birchen canoe, on the toilsome business of 
securino-, through treaties with the Indians, the territorial interests 
of his country, or using his pen in Paris for her benefit, on ques- 
tions of the greatest international scope, while all Europe looked 
on:— Firm and fearless at all times, yet uniting qualities alike 
j^ necessary to high statesmanship, calm, prudent and conciliatory: 
these are some of the attributes and circumstances attaching at 
the first blush to Gen. Cass's career." 

This is the calm, philosophic and sober testimony of a man of 
no little experience or eminence himself, writing in 1S43. But if, 
to employ his own figure, such be the book of his public acts which 
was opetied bv his return from Paris, after the defeat of the quin- 
tuple treaty in 1842, not a few leaves of high patriotic service have 
been added to this book in the subsequent years. Asa Senator: 

He prepared the country to arm itself by land and sea, and stand 
upon its defence by his resolutions laid before the Senate on his 
first entrance into fhat body in December, 1S44. 

He advocated our claims to Oregon, in their entire extent, with 
a force and eloquence, which placed hitvi in the front rank of its 
most able, profound and energetic defenders. 

He gave the entire weight of his character, views, and large 
experience, military and political, to the most prompt and full sus- 
taintnent of the goverrmient in the prosecution of the Mexican war, 
which he maintained to be just, necessary and proper. 

He raised liis voice in the Senate in favor of granting public re- 
lief to the necessities of Ireland, during the providential visitation 
of famine and short crops among that generous and high toned jior- 
tion of the human family to which wc owe so large and patriotic 
an element of our population. 

He responded from his seat, to the voice of Yucatan, asking for 
aid and countenance in the unjust and murderous war carried on 



G3 

against her, by the infuriated class of her semi-civilized native 
population. 

He was foremost among those who gave the expression of 
American sympathy to ihe struggling millions of France, groaning 
undor the long continued exactions and inequalities of arl)itrarY 
laws, and sigliing for tlie enjovuient of their just rights. 

He sought indemnity from Mexico, for the expenses of the war 
which she had unjustly provoked, and as cliairrnnn of tlie military 
committee in the Senate, he carried through measures for strength- 
ening the military arm of the government, till such just indemnitv 
should be secured by treaty provisions. 

These were hi? views iti and out of Congress — as a senator and 
as a citizen, and he did not withhold his voice fioia their expres- 
sion at the popular assemblages of the people. 

Finally: He stood resolutely by the compromises and great prin- 
ciples of the constitution, as guarantied, not only to each citizen, 
as a citizen of the slates, but to the states themselves as integers 
of the confederacy; whether questions in discussion related to a 
revenue, to a national currency, to the public lands, to internal 
improvements, to the vexed subject of persons held to servitude, or 
to the original and indefeusible right of the inhabitants of the new 
territories to form and erect new states on an equal footino-, in all 
respects, with the original states. 

In all the great discussions of his day he has mingled freelv and 
fully. He has neither sought concealment for his views", nor 
shrunk from rcspunsibility. He has. viewed the problem of our 
constitution and government in all its bearings on high { rin.iples. 
He has witnessed man, both as a governed and governing class, in 
both hemispheres. With a ready perception of the evils which 
clog the advance of the human race in the government of Europe, 
and particularly of continental Europe, he has returned from 
abroad with a renewed admiration of the principles of wisdom 
justice, equality and security, public and private, which result from 
the practical working of our institutions. Not nn act of his public 
life — not a sentence from his pen — not a sound from his lips can 
be (pioled in which he does not view this government as the true 
palladium of human liberty — ralional liberty, well founded and 
well secured — and as ofTermg a refuge for the oppressed nations of 
the world. A full belief in the capacity of man for self-o-overn- 
ment under our practical and growing system of education, all hia 
power and influence in the varied situations and j)ublic trusts he 
has held, have been to uphold, to enlarge, and to perpetuate it. 

A man of broad, comprehensive principles and firm inteuritv 

not sectional, but viewing the whole Union, north and south, "and 
every part of the Union as a brotherhood of equal interests and 
rights; a true and high-toned American in all his feelings: a fast 
friend of the Constitution ; a strict constiuciionist who desires to 
see the government administered on principles of economy and 



64 



simplicity, according to its original intention; a democrat in prin- 
ciple; a man of an unspotted private character: Such is General 
Cass; and were the wide Union searched, there is no one, it is 
believed, who, in all respects, is more worthy or better fitted, at 
this particular juncture of afiairs, to be invested with the Chief 
Power. 



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